With the Chinks

WITH THE
CHINKS

DARYl KLPIN

ilttiaca, ^tm ^aik

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

COLLECTION

CHINA AND THE CHINESE

THE GIFT OF
CHARLES WILLIAM WASON
CLASS OF 1876
1918

The original of tliis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022973196

THREE MEN Ol" CHINA

On Active Service Series

Cornell University Library
D 549.CSK64

With the Chinlcs,

3 1924 022 973 196

WITH THE CHINKS

WITH THE CHINKS

BY DARYL KLEIN, 2nd LIEUTENANT
IN THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS fig fig ffi ffi

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXIX

VNl.O^bl

WILLIAM BRBHDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND

TO

ALL IMPERIAL OFFICERS

WHO RECRUITED THE CHINESE

WHO HELPED TO BRING THEM OVER

AND

WHO WORKED WITH THEM IN FRANCE

FOREWORD

I FEEL that a word of apology is due to the
reader for the disjointed character of this
Httle book. When in China I joined the
Chinese Labour Corps I kept a diary at first,
recording fairly fully my impressions of the
work from day to day. These impressions
covered what progress we made in training
the coolies ; also I endeavoured to record
the coolies' point of view, what they thought
of us, their new masters, and of this their
new life in the C.L.C. To begin with I had
no story to tell, but once away from camp in
China, embarked on what I am calling the
Interminable Journey, the germ of narrative
crept into my diary and I found myself
spinning something of a yarn — the yarn, in
fact, of our voyage from China to France.

The diary, which is printed practically as
I wrote it, covers the training period in
China (two months) and crossing the Pacific.
The narrative begins with our long stay in

viii WITH THE CHINKS

Canada (ten weeks), and grows with the un-
expected passage of the Panama Canal, a
few delightful days in Kingston, Jamaica, a
few delightful hours in New York, and so
onward across the now haunted Atlantic to
France. This long journey gave me many
an opportunity to observe the mental shock
and change which a coohe suffers as he leaves
the placid East and is shown the brilliant
wonders of the West. He does not appear
to be greatly interested in anything; he
seldom gives way to an expression of sur-
prise, but, like a child, he is taking it in all
the time, he is changing under the influence
of a new vision, and there is not a coolie in
France to-day who, when the war is over,
will not go back to his country a better
man for his exploits abroad, a progressive
spirit, and the possessor of clean habits.

That is not to say that he left China a
barbarian. If this little work in the least
modifies the popular conception of the
" Chinese coohe " it will have done much.
As children we were taught to believe that
both Cain and coolies were murderers from
the beginning ; no coohe was to be trusted ;
he was a yellow dog ; he would stick a knife

FOREWORD ix

into you in a dark alley on a dark night. He
was treacherous. To-day we have outgrown
this puerihty, but still retain a deep distrust
of the coolie and his ways. Nothing could
be more unfair. The coolie whom we trained
and brought to France is a simple, jolly
fellow. He is content with the very sim-
plicities of Hf e ; he steals, but not overmuch ;
he is to be trusted. He is extraordinarily
happy ; he grins and grins ; he is good to
his fellow-creature. In the following pages
I have often compared him to a child because
of his simplicity, his playfulness, his frank
delight with life, his quaintness and his affec-
tionate character,

B.E.F., France,

July, 19 1 8.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Three Men of China .... Prontupiece

To face page

"Queue after queue fell without a murmur

FROM THE victims" ....

"They gathered in knots and guessed at the

LIFE to come" ....

Embarkation day at Tsingtau

A port of call on the interminable journey

" Intoxicated by the morning they swung along
THE Canadian road"

Pitching camp in Canada

The pride of clean tent lines

"Leisure drives the coolie artist mind to
action" .....

"Onward to Panama" ....

"Followed a couple of days and nights at
Colon" .....

Theatricals in Canada

8

8
io6
132

132
166

166

188
214

214

252

PART I

WITH THE CHINKS

JANUARY

One day in late December I arrived at Tsing-
tau just after noon. Three hours we took
to get alongside, the steamer crunching her
way through floes of ice. The thermometer
down to zero. A coastline jagged and
brilliant as a bit of crystal. A perishingly
cold drive to the Grand Hotel, where I fell
in with our commandant, Vessy, a little
man of decisive speech, who, having intro-
duced me to his family, asked me if I would
like to go out to the Coolie Camp at Tsang-
kou (about ten miles from Tsingtau) that
afternoon, or spend a day in town and start
work on Monday. Wishing to get into harness
as soon as might be, I said I would go out
with him. He gave me a lift in one of the
camp cars, which after speeding through

2 WITH THE CHINKS

hilly country for about twenty minutes,
brought us in sight of a tall yellow chimney.

"Down that chimney," said Vessy, "is the
camp."

" A peculiar place for a camp," I reflected,
" but if it means our quarters are in a furnace
and the furnace is aUght it will be very wel-
come." For I was thinking of the intense
cold and of the wind that never relaxed its
pressure.

A few minutes later I understood what he
meant. The silk-filature factory which is
now transformed into the Coolie Labour
Corps' Training Station is built in a little
valley, not much of a valley to be sure, and
affording scant protection from the insistent
merciless breeze. However, down it was in
a sense. A Chinese sentry saluted, smartly
enough, as we passed into an enclosure of
considerable size.

On one side a row of low white stone
houses, partly given over to the coolies'
quarters, partly to the Sausage Machine of
which I shall have more to say later on. A
guard-room at one end of this row of houses
and at the other G.H.Q. Immediately before
one a gravelled space now known as the

JANUARY 3

Parade Ground, enclosed with barbed wire.
" For all the world like a prison camp," I
thought. And within were the " prisoners,"
marching in columns, at least five hundred
of them, uniformly clothed in tanned leather-
coloured coats, with dark brown caps on
their heads. At second glance I thought of
them as so many convicts. Some walked
with a convict's slouch, others carried them-
selves like men on H.M. service ; all kept
tolerably together, changing direction now
and again, and going through the elementary
movements associated with company drill
without arms.

And in a little while the wind carried to
me the sounds of certain words of command,
given with great precision, and I made out a
European standing in their midst, waving his
arms about and brandishing a cane.

" One of my colleagues," I ventured to
Vessy.

"A Russian officer," he answered, "who
has given up his title in the Russian Army
to go home with the coolies. Because he
can't rejoin his regiment on the eastern front
he has elected to go to the western front in
charge of a company of Chinese."

4 WITH THE CHINKS

I admired the way his company drilled.

Here it may be said that the present
strength of a Company is 490 — 490 coolies of
varying physique who, having been medically
examined and washed and clothed, are
handed over to "one of us" in the raw to be
hammered and coaxed and cursed into a
disciphned body of men. That is all I know
about it so far. And I have seen little more
than this in the making. I don't doubt I
shall see a great deal more and have much
to say. But all in good time.

To complete the description of the en-
closure : to the left, as one comes in the
gates, is a barn-like house, about 100 yards
from the parade ground, formerly the resi-
dence of the silk-filature factory manager,
and now the Officers' Mess. Our mess. Its
outstanding virtue is that it has a warm
room, one cosy warm room, where we all sit
in off-duty hours and discuss the merits and
demerits of the Chinese coolie — not to men-
tion the War and the days to come when we
shall be tossing across the Northern Pacific
or landing our companies somewhere in
France.

There are joys in store.

JANUARY 5

" In the shape," says our pessimist, Med-
cork, "of waves forty feet high, sea-sickness
upon our Oriental multitude, and a transfer
as a Tommy into some line regiment as soon
as you set foot in the war zone."

We are fourteen, I think, in the mess. Of
all parts and professions ; successful young
merchants who have thrown up good jobs to
go home with the coolies, missionaries,
planters, authors and nondescripts, not for-
getting our Russian officer. To-night, my
first night in camp, I have an impression that
I have fallen among comrades, men of the
right spirit, British in their passion for
grousing. Far Eastern in their passionate
endeavour to procure little luxuries of life,
SpEirtan in their heroic attempt to stand the
astonishing cold. Our optimist, Harris, a
journalist, warbles of the warmer days in
France, halcyon days, when we shall be
living in tents with every comfort in the
vicinity, under a balmy French sky.

"Full of Hun aeroplanes and stray shrap-
nel," adds Medcork.

However that may be, we worked up a
great " fug " in the cosy room to-night.
After dinner, which was managed and dis-

6 WITH THE CHINKS

patched in real barracks' style, we gathered
round a noble old stove and toasted our-
selves and talked and smoked till the room
was wrapt in a cloud.

While some played poker, with matches
for counters, others looking on, I debated the
Russian question with the Russian officer,
and was beginning to feel that the new life
was very tolerable indeed, the hours easy,
the work healthy, my colleagues most genial
souls, when in came Vessy, the commandant,
upon which a silence fell, and I learnt to my
surprise that we were leading a military life
in a military camp, which camp had to be
guarded night and day. Sentries must be
posted at intervals both inside and outside
the <:amp in order to prevent the escape of
homesick, lovelorn or otherwise fed-up cooHes,
and an official inspection of these sentries
was necessary. In other words, a four-hour
watch, being the privilege of aU officers, and
in particular the privilege of the newly
arrived officer. "My first job," I reflected;
and to be sure I was forthwith allowed to sit
in the guard-room, and go the rounds of the
camp from midnight of my first night to four
o'clock of my first day.

II

I SURVIVED the watch, getting back to bed
at 4.30, and down to breakfast at 8. I feel as
though I have begun to do my bit. I do not
mean this cynically. The hours are easy :
8.30 to 12, and 2 to 4, but there is a lot to do
while one is at it. Spent the morning over-
seeing certain functions of the Sausage
Machine :

1. The hair-cutting function.

2. The cleansing function.

These are midway functions of a process
which turns an ordinary uninviting workaday
coolie into a clean, well-clothed and smartly
active human being. An astonishing process
which is doing a great good for a corner of
China. If the whole nation, male and female,
could pass through the Sausage Machine it
would make the people anew, as it is making
them, two to three hundred a day, in this
camp.

The coolies are recruited chiefly from the
7.

8 WITH THE CHINKS

province of Shantung. They are tempted to
depart from the way of their lives as farmers
and labourers of one kind and another by
offers of splendid pay, sight of a new world,
and other equally uncommon recruiting
phrases. And they come to camp quite
ignorant, I am told, of the pleasures imme-
diately in store for them. A medical examina-
tion, a hair-cut, a hot bath, a suit of clothes
and sundry other garments, not to speak of
vaccination and a brass bracelet which bears
an identification number, are not accorded
freely and for the asking, if not upon invita-
tion, in many places in the world. The
coolies are lucky — lucky from the moment
they enter the Sausage Machine to the
moment they embark at Tsingtau, careless
of their destination ; only hoping that they
will go on living the same life on board ship
as they led in barracks, where they lacked
neither clothes nor food.

Of the two functions above mentioned, I
was most interested in the barber's. Being
northerners, these coolies wear a queue which,
rather strangely I thought, they did not in
the least object to losing. Queue after queue
fell without a murmur from the victims. A

^■■'',

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"TirRV GATIfKliED rN J-.'NMI'^ AM> GUESSEI? AT I Fll-: I f P~ I'; TO CDMI-:

JANUARY 9

few appeared regretful to lose so intimate a
thing, picking it up after it had been sheared,
handling it fondly and examining the careful
plaits. Naked they sat during this process,
which being ended, they would get up and
scratch their bald pates and then make for
the great vat of hot water in the next room.
On the edge of the vat stood a Chinese
official who relentlessly pushed his victims
into the water, first daubing their heads with
liquid soap. The vat itself was a welter of
human bodies, getting clean each after his
manner. Then a brisk rub with a towel after
which the skin would show a glistening
polish, like the surface of a stone washed by
the sea for many years. It was a study for
Michael Angelo.

Later in the day these same bathers join
the ranks. At present there are four com-
panies, A to D, in formation. D is incom-
plete. The others have their full comple-
ment of 480 men. This afternoon I assisted
in the drilling of C Company, which will be
commanded by our Russian officer. The
company is not very far advanced. It has
but a hazy idea of the movement — form
fours. But it is wonderful how quickly these

10 WITH THE CHINKS

men get hold of the thing. After two hours
of shouting I succeeded in making the whole
company do the movement without a mistake
and with a certain smartness.

The simple movements are of course done
by numbers. Every coolie counts aloud — i,
errh, san (one, two, three), for instance, when
forming fours or two deep — the majority is
given to shouting — so that when the move-
ment is performed by 500 the din is terrific.
Against the thunder of this counting one's
voice of command sounds piping.

I see one has to be stern with the coolies ;
but to lose patience is as unwise as to indulge
in laughter. Impatience and laughter must
possess a man who is suddenly put in com-
mand of 500 men. The mere idea is laugh-
able, though, I dare say, one gets used to it
soon enough. And the unwieldy mass of
them makes for impatience when explaining
a movement in lame Chinese or demon-
strating it in action. But for all their
childishness and forgetfulness they are quick
to learn and of a wiUing temperament. So
often they do not understand, not because
they cannot, but because the instructions are
not conveyed clearly to them. They delight

JANUARY II

in their new billets. It must be play to them,
and a " soft " thing, after the crudeness of life
in the village and field and on the maiden
path, with a freighted wheelbarrow squeak-
ing before them. That is why they are apt
to laugh more than it is good to laugh in the
ranks. They have already caught, or I
would say were naturally endowed with, the
traditional spirit of the British Army —
cheeriness ; but they are perhaps too satu-
rated with that spirit just at the moment,
being particularly inclined to make a roaring
joke out of a brother's mistake.

If the company commander holds a coolie
up to ridicule, the victim becomes a laughing-
stock in the eyes of his fellows. This is of
course most upsetting to the C.C. Only by
darting fire from his eyes and brandishing a
stick and roaring "shun ! " can he restore the
company to a normal state of seriousness.
It is very necessary to keep serious. A
sense of humour should be discouraged in a
C.C. of the C.L.C. He should be coaxed to
view his task in the light that any C.C. at
home looks upon the training of a unit for
the New Armies. Discipline must be top
dog.

12 WITH THE CHINKS

And yet we are cautioned that it is not
desirable to put too military a construction
upon our duties. In other words, do not
spread the notion amongst your men that
they are going into the front-line trenches.
Do not lead them to suppose that they are
China's first hundred thousand. And do not
think of yourself as a C.C, but as a super-
visor of labour, a ganger par excellence, a
glorified stevedore.

Fire-arms are unknown in the camp. They
would be very useful in emphasizing one's
commands. And then again they would be a
splendid substitute for one's vocal chords,
which are worked at high pressure from the
moment of appearing on the parade ground
to the moment of leaving. There is always
something to shout at.

Ill

The recruit has an annoying habit of leaving
his place in the ranks, not from funk or out
of spite, but in order to say a few words to
his brother further down the Une. And his
brother welcomes the defaulter as a rule,
sometimes leaving his position to meet the
latter half-way. Often, when one's eye is
turned, social knots are formed in the ranks,
cigarettes appear and get lighted with extra-
ordinary rapidity, discussions are indulged in
and other liberties of the barrack-room. A
thundering "Li shung" (attention) restores
order, but it is usually some time before the
drill can proceed, for in the panic men lose
their places, and forget their numbers, not
attempting to sort themselves out, with the
result that when an order like form-fours is
given chaos is the outcome. It would break
the heart of the most hardened training
officer at home ; it would drive him to the
mad-house. Such insubordination from the
word, " go " ; such a light conception of duties ;

13

14 WITH THE CHINKS

so prevalent a comic spirit. We, who are
indeed training ofi&cers, are differently con-
stituted. Not that we are softer than our
kind at home, but that we understand the
thing we are shaping. It cannot be shaped
like anything Western; it cannot in fact be
shaped at all. It has to be hammered ; not
crudely as one would hammer molten iron
into a horse-shoe, but as one hammers a
metal sheet into a kerosene tin.

And the result is invariably good. A
fortnight's hammering and the men smarten
their movements astonishingly ; they step
with precision ; they even keep step without
the aid of fife and drum.

The training is done collectively. Unlike
our own recruit, the coolie is seldom singled
out for individual shaming.

The ideal C.L.C. training officer is en-
dowed with profound tact. If he does not
understand Chinese (and perhaps the ideal
officer does not) he must be endowed with a
sense deeper than tact — ability to fathom
what is in the mind of his men. It is best to
speak of them collectively, for a company
thinks along one line ; if anything goes right
or wrong it does so en masse ; that is why the

JANUARY 15

results of our work are so encouraging ; the
smartness, the advent of shape, comes all at
once ; seldom are there stragglers in the way
of efficiency. Although — to end a long
parenthesis — we don't, to be sure, go very far
along the way of efficiency.

The ideal officer is also slow to anger,
though not necessarily of a meek countenance.
Temper, which finds voice in cursing, is ab-
surdly unavailing. A little anger is a good
thing ; much of it provokes enjoyment in
the ranks. To swear is no good unless it
relieves the feelings. The most hideous
blasphemy passes bUssfuUy over the heads of
the cooUes. The ideal officer does not laugh
or even smUe, for any such indulgence is
immediately imitated in the ranks. A com-
pany of coolies would make the finest audience
in the world. It would pay an enterprising
theatrical manager over and over again to
" paper the house " liberally on an opening
night with Chinese coolies.

IV

One night in early January a coolie tried to
escape. Not that the coolies are forcibly
detained — if a man vouchsafes a valid reason
for deserting the service he can go — but, you
see, they are under contract. They under-
take to do this and that before embarking
for France ; they undertake not to go out-
side the camp at night, without getting
permission.

The coolie in question was caught in the
act of dropping from the roof of one of the
barracks whose back is to the road which
leads to Tsingtau in one direction, and to a
dead end in the other. The sentries outside
the camp were awake. Questioned why, at a
court of inquiry held this morning, he was
desirous of so impolitely leaving his com-
rades, a dry warm wooden bed, no end of
rice, and the interesting prospect of seeing
France at war, he said, that he wanted to
give up all for his wife and follow her,
averring that, although he greatly respected

i6

JANUARY 17

his O.C, and was sorry to desert him (I can
hear the O.C. crying—"! don't fink"), he
revered his wife, and reverence for her
strengthened him in his endeavour to escape
from a house of mild bondage. He did not
dream he would drop into the arms of a
sentry ; which was about the truest remark
the O.C. conducting the court of inquiry
had ever heard.

Embarkation Day is said to be a great day
in Tsingtau ; like Graduation Day in an
American University, the graduates going
out on the Sea of Life — the Yellow Sea, to
be quite accurate. It was told to-night in
mess that the coolies do not know and do not
question where they are going. Having been
assured that they are not going into action
on the western front, they set out light-
heartedly, as men on some fine adventure,
not caring about their destination so long as
they are decently fed and clothed.

The first contingent, which sailed in April,
1917, was much exercised over this point,
in so much that a mutiny took place on
board the ship before she was far on her
way, an absurd rumour upsetting them to
the effect that they were walking into a
death-trap.

The conversation in mess is none too fluent,
possibly owing to the fact that we are all
hoarse from shouting at our coolies. But

18

JANUARY 19

one night, after dinner, in that warm cosy
room of ours, there were many words in
regard to the transportation of the cooUes
via the Pacific and Canada. Redbrick, a
ginger-haired, ginger-tongued, toughish little
American, took the bull by the horns and
told us much concerning something he knew
little about. Imagination came astonishingly
to his aid; and, to imagine is infectious, just
as it is infectious to exaggerate, the tendency
of one man being to outdo the other.

However, imagination after dinner goes
well with coffee ; and it was stimulating to
Usten to Redbrick prophesying what sort of
a reception the people of New York would
give him were he to march his coolies down
Broadway. Some one imitated the way the
cooHes have of shouting, i, errh, i, errh (one,
two ; one, two), as they march along, the
effect of the sound being similar to the
braying of a donkey ; and the idea of the
coolies doing this on Broadway met with
great enthusiasm in the mess.

" Why, you can just see me, boys," cried
Redbrick, " I'd be a little tin hero."

A Briton, a dear out-and-out Briton, slow
of speech and of movement, Clarison by name,

20 WITH THE CHINKS

was not to be outdone by his Yankee col-
league.

"I'd rather march the bhghters down
Piccadilly," he said.

" They'd laugh at me in Aberdeen," put in
our only Scot.

And the fact of coolies passing through
England revived the much-debated question
of whether or not Russian troops did pass
through England from Aberdeen at the com-
mencement of the War.

Sympathizing with the late Press reaction
against the rumour, there was a chorus of
denial. Upon a couple of dissenters keeping
the subject alive, our Russian friend was
looked to, but he would throw no light on
the point.

"It is possible," he said, "for many Rus-
sians have fought on the western front, and
they might have come through your country."

Our Russian says few words. He keeps to
himself more than any other man in the
mess. His heart is in this business. It is
a joy to watch him with his company.
He demonstrates the drill with professional
swagger. His voice carries to the uttermost
man. After observing him and his way with

JANUARY 21

men it is apparent we straight-from-the-
of&ce instructors have a long way to go.
Perhaps, however, his mien and carriage are
too military. If I were a coolie under him
I should suspect that I was destined for one
of the vital sectors on the western front.

VI

I BEGAN the New Year by drilling the p'aitous^
of C Company. This at 6.30 a.m. ; the duty
of the O.C. But O.C. of C Company had a
bad head, not as the result of celebrating
New Year's Eve, which would be quite in
order, but owing to doing a guard and a half,
i.e., six hours on the previous night.

In the phraseology of General Orders : " In
order that they may gain confidence and
authority, p'aitous . . . should be given fre-
quent opportunities of drilling the men. It
is necessary, therefore, that they should
themselves be drilled apart until they are
proficient."

It is unfortunate that the Christian and
Chinese New Years do not synchronize. Pos-
sibly I should have been spared leaving a
warm bed before dawn, getting hoarse before
breakfast, and seeing the p'aitous in a new
and alarming light. In the " dusk " of dawn,

1 ^'at=section ; <0M=head. Head of section; in other
words, lance-corporal.

JANUARY 23

marching two-deep slowly and solemnly on
to the parade ground, I saw them for a
moment and quite unforgettably as a pro-
cession of priests, their long maroon water-
proofs looking like pontifical robes and their
number sticks, which they hold in the hand
or stick in the front of the coat, for all the
world like crucifixes.

The tall chimney of the silk-filature factory,
rising into gloom out of a whitish block of
buildings, could have been mistaken for the
spire of a church. It was a windless silent
dawn. Appallingly ecclesiastical. I stood
enrapt ; and was only awakened to the fact
that I was in command of a squad of p'aitous
by the squad coming hard up against a stone
wall — the wall of the factory.

The p'aitous are picked men and are put
in charge of fourteen coolies. They are
chosen by the company commander after
much head-scratching. It is not easy to
determine which is the most inteUigent of
fifteen coolies. Their brains are apparently
created to pattern. As a rule, he who moves
faster than his fellow, he who watches his
C.C, he who has a sense of direction, becomes
a f'aitou. But p'aitous, being men, are

24 WITH THE CHINKS

subject to strange lapses. They are apt to
forget, as they did this morning, that they
have a left arm and a right. When the
command left turn is given, and the entire
squad turns to the right, it gives the C.C.
furiously to think.

If there were some consistency about re-
versing an order, the drill could perfectly
well be done backwards ; and it would be
quite in harmony with the notion that a
Chinese does a thing precisely as a European
does not. That is, on the command form-
fours, the squad would form two-deep ; on
the command stand at ease, the squad would
come to attention ; and so on ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, there is no consistency in
this matter, and the above said notion is
ridiculous. In the case cited, for which no
reasonable explanation can be given, the
only thing for the exasperated C.C. to do is
to give the command in Chinese. "Hsiang tso
chuan" (left turn) restores order and brings
the light of understanding to care-worn
p'aitous.

To-day the number of potential company
commanders in camp was increased by two ;
one, a customs' man, as the phrase goes, a

JANUARY 25

thick-set, so far silent and somewhat elderly
little man who has lived eighteen years in
Shanghai and doesn't look any the worse for
it ; and the other, a Captain Linen, who was
with the C.L.C. in France, and who now
appears amongst us in uniform, making us
in mufti feel quite out of place. There is
comfort, however, in the thought that before
the New Year is many weeks old we also
shall be able to swank without swanking —
which is the great gift of a uniform; that
we also shall be able to plunge our hands
into spacious tunic side-pockets and stand
with legs apart in front of the fire.

Talking about uniform, the diversity of
our present costumes is worth noting. Stiff
collars which were prevalent the day I
arrived have given place to soft collars,
multi-coloured neckerchiefs, mufflers and
sweaters. Redbrick persists in wearing a
stiff turnover with which he combines a
black felt hat and a pair of spats. He could
well walk down his Broadway without a
change. It is mooted that his coolies make
him out the best dressed of all the C.C.'s.

The Russian lost his luggage somewhere
in the Carpathians, reducing his wear to a

26 WITH THE CHINKS

cutaway, which, for fear his men should
mistake him for a missionary or a politician,
he covers with a mackintosh. Our missionary,
Mr. Goodyear, of Japan, drills in a black suit
of clerical cut ; he arms himself with a silver-
knobbed ebony cane, lest his incurable good-
will towards men rob him of the authority
wherewith it is necessary to shape a batta-
lion of coolies. Our merchant of Manila,
being used to the heat of the tropics, swathes
himself in two overcoats, as many muflElers
and a tam-o'-shanter. It is said that on
particularly cold days he is a pleasant sight
in the eyes of the coolies, suggesting to them
as he must the very embodiment of warmth.

VII

Finding nothing in general orders in regard
to the duties of officers on guard from 4 to 8
a.m., I mapped out a programme of my own,
which I divided fairly between comforts and
discomforts. Latter consisted, first, of keep-
ing awake, and secondly, of making the
rounds ; the former consisted, first, of keep-
ing warm in the guard-house and, secondly,
of making a cup of chocolate. And, as many
treasonable orderly officers will tell you, it is
quite astonishing how many letters you can
write in four hours, with the aid of a stove,
a pipe and a cup of chocolate. The guard
could easily be a more distasteful business.
One is not without company. A Chinese
corporal and lance-corporal sit at attention
in the guard-house all the night long. They
sit in a brown study, meditating, it may be,
the fate in France of the first hundred
thousand of their fellow-countrymen. They
rise and salute when you come on guard, and
then sink back into meditation. I roused

27

28 WITH THE CHINKS

the corporal sufficiently to boil the water for
my chocolate.

The less said about going the rounds the
better. I can't conceive that the wind that
whistles around Mount Erebus is keener or
more unkind than the wind that makes
Tsangkou Camp an abomination between
sundown and dawn. And it is a long dark-
ness. I pity the sentries ; on my first round,
which I made laboriously, doubly muffled
and over-coated, I fully expected to find the
sentries on the more exposed posts hard and
lifeless as a pillar of salt. Sentries have
been found asleep, but not by me. Always
came the challenge, "Hoc Gos Air" ("Who
Goes There"), quaintly pronounced with a
Northerner's accent.

Captain Linen, at dinner, alternately
cheered and damped us with tales of how the
coolies behave on the voyage home.

" The first few days on the ship," he said,
" are perfect hell. Most of the coolies have
never seen a ship before ; some have never
seen the sea, for they come from far inland
and their lives seldom out-circle the village
of their birth. Once on board, they wander
all over the ship, some penetrating into the

JANUARY 29

first saloon to the disgust of passengers who
do not understand that the coolies are as
little children innocent of the division exist-
ing, as it exists in society, between different
classes of passengers."

Captain Linen is a good talker, and went
on to say that after a while the coolies settle
down, but the trouble begins again when the
boat runs into weather ; violent sea-sickness
had led to mild mutinies. He told amusing
tales about the rail journey from Vancouver
to Halifax, how the coolies had exchanged
salutes with the police on the train, to the
immense surprise of the latter, and how
when arriving at a station they had stuck
their heads out of the window and issued
ambiguous orders to the soldiers patrolling
the platform, crying out shrilly and with a
gleam of teeth, "Bout-Turn" and "Dees-
Miss" and "Standat-ees."

The Captain's genial summary was: "All
things considered their behaviour is wonder-
fully good." It is said they astound poilus
and Tommies in France by disembarking in
perfect order, marching off two-deep and
forming smartly into p'ais (sections) , platoons,
companies and battalions. We have much
to look forward to.

VIII

There came a day of sundry misfortunes.
To begin with, Redbrick was troubled with
corns. I was eye-witness to his loss of
temper. His company (A) were very patient
with him, thoroughly enjojang his flow of
well-spiced Yankee language. I thought and
hoped they would get through the day with-
out one of their p'aitous being reduced to the
ranks, or one of the ranks being sent to jail
(we have a jail, by the way ; not patronized
largely), but, being a soft-hearted chap, I
hoped for too much.

The company were standing at ease in
front of their Bunk-house. Redbrick was
soothing his nerves with a cigarette. A
coolie (reckless man!) becoming irresistibly
possessed with a desire to smoke, steps out
of the ranks and with enviable sang-froid
sidles up to his commander and takes the
fag out of the latter's mouth, claiming it for
his own. Amazement — a terrible silence —
an explosion, followed by swift confused

3°

JANUARY 31

movements. To-morrow the culprit will
complain of corns elsewhere than on the
little toe. This is the worst of having a
super-sense of humour. In Tsangkou the
deed is funny, and is related with relish at
mess ; in Europe it would have meant P.D.,
F.P., or both.

Our children (a paternal attitude towards
the coolies is recommended) are passionately
fond of playing the fool. They are a race of
Peter Pans, never having grown up. Nightly
I thank God they are not going to be soldiers.
Never a man would reach the trenches alive.
I see their fate at the hands of a colonel
ignorant of their psychology. They would
be shot at dawn by battalions.

Yet, if Wells is right in saying that laughter
will end this war, the C.L.C. may do it.

It must not be imagined, however, that
there is weakness in our paternal treatment
of the coolies. There is rivalry among the
officers in regard to the number of canes
broken on the backs, legs and shins, not to
speak of the heads of defaulters. The supply
of canes ran short in Tsingtau some time
ago. Redbrick has the greatest number to
his credit, or should I say discredit ? Not-

32 WITH THE CHINKS

withstanding, it must be said in justice to him
that his company is the most efficient in camp.

The second misfortune is no more serious
than the first, but perhaps it is worth telling.
I assisted to-day in the " hammering " of C
Company, which is commanded by our
Russian. That over-six-foot deep-chested
blue-eyed proudish O.C. quite failed in spirit
during the afternoon. The cavalry ring
went out of his voice ; the flash faded from
his directing arm ; the temperature of his
company went down in sympathy. He hung
his " needless head 'mong men," and dis-
missed the parade about half an hour before
regulation time. Walking wearily back to
mess I questioned him about his despondency,
but not openly, thinking that he might be in
love and that the thought of his girl was
making him sad. But it was not that. It
was simply that he was fed up.

" I am not proud," he said in his Scan-
dinavian-flavoured English, " but I do like
people to talk to ; I like to exchange ideas.
It is dull for me after being in Washington
and London. In those cities I was attached
to our Embassy. I moved among so many
interesting people."

JANUARY 33

Then after a pause in which I turned over
a phrase of sympathy :

" These cooHes are so stupid. It is my
fault too. I cannot speak to them. My
EngUsh is so poor. The interpreter under-
stands me with difficulty. I wish the boat
would come. I want to get away."

"It is due on the sixth," I said, " you will
have a livelier time on board."

" Perhaps," he replied, and relapsed into
thought.

Poor chap ! He was a Major of cavalry
in the Russian Army, in a crack regiment.
A CO. in the C.L.C. is scarcely so dis-
tinguS.

The third misfortune was due to the
objectionable practice of inoculation. Two
of my colleagues lie in bed to-day, having
been grievously wounded in the chest last
night by a syringe needle. One was Harris,
the journaUst, my room-mate. He had a
touch of fever this morning, and talked in
his sleep, imagining, I gathered from a frag-
mentary monologue, that he was a corre-
spondent at the front in full view of the
enemy, which were battaUons of coohes who,
against orders, had learnt the use of fire-

34 WITH THE CHINKS

arms. The other, Clarison, is feeling very
sorry for himself.

Medcork is certain the weather will get
colder. Captain Linen says the coldest snap
in France will be warm after a winter in this
part of North China. Our Russian scorns
the weather, telling us that if we want to
feel what real cold is like we should go with
him to the Carpathians. We politely refuse
his invitation, being quite content with the
knowledge of cold obtainable in Tsangkou.

IX

All the coolies were inoculated, some for
the first time, and some for the second, so
that to the equal joy of coolies and officers,
sons and fathers, I should say, a holiday was
declared in the afternoon. Fathers should
not see too much of their sons ; not that
familiarity has a great chance of breeding
contempt when a father is the possessor of
five hundred children, but that it does both
good to be apart now and again, for separation
between affectionate souls makes them doubly
affectionate when they are reunited.

There will be a touching meeting on the
parade ground to-morrow morning. There
are no bounds to love once it is alight. Pos-
sibly officers will turn out half an hour earlier
in order to visit their men as they lie in bed,
or, to be more accurate, on the wooden
shelves provided for them in the so-called
Bunk-houses. About 250 coolies live in a
house ; which suggests congestion. A more
tolerant description would run — economical

35

36 WITH THE CHINKS

packing ; coolies being packed at night
shoulder to shoulder on three tiers of shelves
running the length of the Bunk-house. I do
not doubt that a medical commission would
condemn the method as being perilously in-
sanitary. For Europeans it would be ; for
Chinese it is passably snug — and snugness is
all that is looked to.

General Orders say: "Company Officers
should, during their spare time, visit their
men's quarters and endeavour to let the men
see that they take an interest in their wel-
fare."

On the surface of it this looks simple, but let
us examine it. In the first place officers do
not have spare time ; they have to make it.
Postulate the time as made, the next step in
the execution of the order requires moral
courage and a dead or deadened sense of
smell. Both uncommon qualities in man.
Two hundred and fifty coolies hibernating in
the same room create quite an atmosphere
of their own. It takes moral courage to go
out of the fresh Manchurian breezes into that
which is best left undescribed.

Once within, an officer proceeds to carry
out orders by holding his nose, and he cannot

JANUARY 37

do this and effectually inquire into the welfare
of his men at the same time. Through the
medium of his interpreter (always bearing in
mind that he is a father come to visit and to
comfort his children), he interrogates this
son and that, asking them with exemplary
forethought if they are perfectly satisfied
with their quarters ; if they are warm at
night and so forth ; wondering the while in
his heart how he will ever get the air he is
breathing out of his lungs, and how it is
possible for so divine a creation as man to be
content to sleep on a wooden shelf — like a
book in a public library.

Does a son lodge a complaint, the officer
eloquently extols the condition of the men's
quarters, comparing them to the dirt and
darkness of the mud huts and stone hovels
in which they used to live. Petty plaints are
set aside with the vast and vain generalization
that if better times are not to come, certainly
not worse are to be expected. Subtle allu-
sions are made to the genial climate of
France ; reminders are made of the splendid
pay. These unavailing, letters are shown
from yellow brothers in the war zone, testify-
ing to the plenitude of rice and rabbits and

38 WITH THE CHINKS

leeks and black eggs and other luxuries
behind the lines.

An officer, in fulfilling the above-quoted
order, takes a hint from Napoleon that an
army marches on its stomach. Pinching his
nostrils, he guides the complainant to the
kitchen — an attachment to each Bunk-house
— and whets the appetite of the ingrate with
fumes of boiling rice, informing him that at
certain hours of the day he can eat as much
as his belly will hold. If this is insufficient
inducement to remain a unit of the C.L.C.,
interest in the man's welfare ceases, and he
is clapped into jail or sent home.

X

One day the spirit of officers was markedly
lowered by receipt of news from Hong-Kong
that the next ship was not due until the
middle of the month.

It was suggested that fathers negotiate
with their sons to leave them to their own
devices for a week, and pack off to some
lively spot to pass the interim in feast and
song. Mr. Goodyear, who is the sphinx of
the mess, suddenly broke into speech anent
this, submitting that the act would be
grossly unfilial.

" It would be a breach of good faith which
our sons would always hold against us," he
cried.

And after much debating we came to see
the error of our suggestion.

" Hang our sons," shouted Clarison, " it's
time we had some daughters."

At which a shameful silence fell at the table ;
but in our hearts we were with Clarison,
knowing him to be fond of women, and never

39

40 WITH THE CHINKS

a woman had been seen in camp. Harris
declared he would write to the Times re-
garding the tardiness of the ship's arrival at
Tsingtau. The Russian fell into a slough of
despond, straining his ankle, so that for the
nonce he is incapacitated and I am acting
O.C. Captain Linen, who confided to me
last night that he was fed up with " hanging
about China," took the matter to heart, his
temperature rising to loi this afternoon.
He is abed and lies there possibly in order
to avoid the all-day duties of an orderly
officer, which had fallen upon him for fulfil-
ment to-morrow.

Medcork, after his manner, was willing to
bet anyone a month's pay that the ship
would strike a typhoon between Hong-Kong
and Tsingtau and not make port at aU.

We are a jolly crowd to-night. Some are
consoling themselves with poker, others have
gone to Tsingtau to ascertain what is the
day of the week, and still others, like myself,
believe in bed as a cure for all ephemeral
troubles. Certainly our sons do, having been
"shelved" since sundown.

XI

On Sunday, confessions were usually indulged
in. Harris, who has an excellent digestion
and the temperament of a lamb, admitted
that he was growing astonishingly callous in
his treatment of the coolies. Harris has
charge of the Reserve company which, ab-
sorbing as it does all the new recruits, grows
to portentous size, preceding the departure
of a battalion. When a shipload of coolies is
gone, the Reserve company is split up into
companies of 500 (roughly). In its present
inflated state it is exceedingly difficult to
manage, requiring from the CO. a nice fusion
of discipline and tenderness. He who was
inclined to coddle and gently persuade his
coolies into order is to-day a cast-iron dis-
ciplinarian. So he confessed to-day.

" The smallest breach of discipline drives
me into a fury," he said. " I don't know what
has come over me. Time was when I was
sweetly persuasive. I could initiate a coolie
into the knowledge of left and right without

41

42 WITH THE CHINKS

loss of temper. To-day I cane him into this
knowledge ; and if a man leaves the ranks
without permission or echoes and imitates
my word of command or lights a cigarette
on parade, or does anything which is against
my will, I see red."

In Harris' heart is a great fear of becoming
like a Prussian officer. " What if I should
become like that which we are seeking to
destroy ? " This is indeed a calamity for the
Reserves, for Harris is a great exponent of
jiu-jitsu, having won the black belt, a decora-
tion of no mean order given in Japan. Com-
plete loss of temper (which must come as a
matter of course to the cast-iron disciplinarian)
will mean resort to the quickest method of
flooring the offenders. Harris in combat
with two thousand coolies wiU be a great
diversion from the somewhat monotonous
life of camp. A sight for ancient Rome.

Before tiffin we would sometimes have a
game of baseball, which was always enthusi-
astically followed by thousands of coolies.
It is rumoured that the skill of the fathers
in pitching, catching, fanning, cussing, steal-
ing and sliding bases, making runs and
home-runs, has done more to raise them in

JANUARY 43

the estimation of their sons than all they
have taught them on the parade ground and
all the interest they have taken in their
welfare.

Several coolies were taken aback at seeing
Mr. Goodyear, the missionary, a participant
in the game. They put their heads together
murmuring that it was not possible for a
truly God-fearing man to play ball on the
Sabbath, but on seeing Mr. Goodyear make a
one-handed catch in outfield, they fell to
marvelling, and repented of their impulse to
cast him out as commanding officer. Par-
ticularly were the spectators delighted when
Redbrick knocked up a "fly" which fell
among the police guard (which was being
changed at midday), causing the same to
scatter as if a shell had fallen in their midst.

The coolies, who for a reason unknown to
me, have a hearty and open contempt for
the native officials in camp, jeered and threw
up their hands in laughter.

And this dislike of native officialdom
reminds me that Medcork told a story at
tiffin. One of his sergeants had come to him
averring that he had been empowered by a
majority of the company's N.C.O.'s to say

44 WITH THE CHINKS

that no orders would in future be recognized
and obeyed which did not come direct from
the Ups of their father. They objected to
the interpreter who was a scurvy-looking
half-breed. Medcork was much exercised
over this, for his knowledge of Chinese is nil.
All " messages " to all ranks are communi-
cated through the medium of the interpreter.

" Block the channel," he cried, " and you
block the way to improvement and effi-
ciency."

Medcork is a keen man. He spent most
of the afternoon trying to explain to the
emissary of the N.C.O.'s that he and his
interpreter were one ; that the interpreter
was his mouthpiece — nothing in himself and
having no power of his own.

Medcork, who is something of a theologist,
found a perfect parallel, but not being certain
of his sergeant's persuasion did not dare to
make use of his parallel. Medcork was getting
the best of the wrangle when the sergeant
suddenly crushed him with the retort that as
his CO. did not know Chinese he could not
check the words of his interpreter, who might
say anjrthing he chose.

Wherefore Medcork now feverishly studies

JANUARY 45

Whitewright's "Introduction to Mandarin."
The future for him is dark. It is as if he
were struck dumb. Being a pessimist he
anticipates a discharge from the C.L.C.

" I'll join the R.A.F.," he says, " a swift
easy death."

XII

There lies in the guard-room a so-called
Report Book in which the orderly officer
notes what he has done during the hours of
his watch, any extraordinary occurrences in
camp, the state of the weather, and other
items of interest to the commandant. Al-
though the scope of this volume is strictly
limited by order, and although brevity in
the entries is heartily recommended by the
commandant, it is lately noticeable that
certain officers are given to spreading them-
selves, as the phrase goes, unduly, recording
with prolix minuteness what matters have
improved each shuddering hour, whilst in-
dulging a spirit of criticism which is scarcely
consonant with their subordinate position.
The duties of an orderly officer are dis-
charged with such secrecy that he cannot be
blamed for seizing an opportunity to lay
written proof of his devotion to them.

But he can overstep the mark. And it is
agreed among us that Harvie, a missionary

46

JANUARY 47

and mountaineer of Japan, overstepped the
mark when he discoursed with fatal facility
in the Report Book upon the accumulation
of dirt in the coolie kitchens, pointing out
that such an insanitary state of affairs was
intolerable to refined coolies.

The adjective " refined " has given rise
to much discussion. Some argue : once a
coolie always a coolie. Others aver that a
coolie who has passed through the Sausage
Machine is refined.

" Refined physically," added Clarison,
" with physical habits unchanged."

And Clarison gave an illustration of the
manner in which army-coated and clean
recruits crowd together in their Bunk-houses,
and in foul air and dinginess lie on their
stomachs or sit cross-legged and listen to a
musical member of their company shrilly
" melodize " on a native violin ; this on the
bottom shelf, whilst on the upper shelves
their brothers consume bowls of rice or sip
tea or smoke cigarettes and pipes, both food
and liquid and ashes falling indiscriminately
and unnoticed on the rapt audience below.

"Amazing chaps," cried Clarison.

And a picture came into my mind of the

48 WITH THE CHINKS

queue of coolies daily visible at the entrance
to the Sausage Machine ; a straggling unkempt
beaten-doggish lot of men, faded and ragged
blue smocks clinging limply to their bodies,
their hands tucked in their sleeves, their
shoulders hunched in the cold morning air ;
a few apparently aware that they are stand-
ing on the threshold of a new life, manifest-
ing a lively interest in the door behind which
a handful of their fellows disappear from
time to time ; most of them with a happy
stoical expression on their faces, as though
life wherever lived were an indifferent and
unalterable thing.

The Report Book having become a Sug-
gestion Book, it now remains for some
courageous member of the mess to submit
that four-hour watches in Northern Chinese
winters menace the health of officers and
should be forthwith abolished. It is strange
how courage among us is lacking.

XIII

There came a day of disaster. B Company
mutinied. The mutiny broke out at 4 p.m.,
dismissal time ; it was countered by the O.C.
and Commandant, who acted bravely ; and
was quelled in half an hour.

It happened in this way : yesterday at
the morning dismissal several coolies belong-
ing to the company in question dropped out
of the ranks and slipped into their Bunk-
houses before the equivalent of "break-off"
— a wave of a cane — had been given by the
O.C. They were peevishly cold — there was a
bitter wind blowing — and as hungry as lion
cubs. They were in the rear ranks ; there
are fifteen ranks in a C.L.C. Company, so
they thought they could get away unseen.
Not so ; the O.C. had quick eyes, sharpened
in the American Rockies. He caught them.
It was not the first time he had caught them.
He took drastic measures to prevent the
thing. He fined the whole company, ex-
cluding N.C.O.'s, a day's pay, which is five

E 49

50 WITH THE CHINKS

coppers a coolie and ten coppers a p'aitou.
He would not " cut them " to-day ; he would
do so to-morrow. His intention was ex-
plained to them by an interpreter. At which
there was much murmuring.

That night the Orderly Officer notes in
the Report Book : " 11.30 p.m. Visited rounds
and coolie quarters ; lights burning in Bunk-
house No. 2, and the sound of voices. Thought
disturbance excessive. Entered house and
found many coolies apparently in conference.
Otherwise nothing amiss." So the mutiny
was hatched. To-morrow dawned, 10° colder
than the day before, with a wind lifting dust
from the surrounding barren flats and lashing
it in the face. Nothing went wrong in the
morning. In the afternoon B Company were
down on orders for a route march of four
miles, outside camp, dusty, discomfiting.

About 2 p.m. B Company got away,
marching in fours. As they go out the camp
gate, a p'aitou, unobserved by the sentry,
leaves the ranks and whispers a moment with
a Chinese who stands just outside, seemingly
interested in the passing column. Two hours
elapse. The column is now entering camp.
The interested spectator stands in the same

JANUARY 51

position. As the p'aitou passes he " slips
him " four bottles, which at the inquiry after
the mutiny were found to contain whisky.
The O.C. dismisses his men. They crowd
round him as the conspirators crowded round
Caesar. They murmur words about pay. He
smiles and shakes his head. They dissent
and persist, but he disperses the mob with
his cane. The mutineers go off in a huff to
their Bunk-house and inflame themselves
with alcohol. They scheme to fall upon
their O.C. when he comes, a couple of hours
later, looking after their welfare. Goodness
knows what they intended to do with him ;
tear him limb from limb, or do unto him as
he had done unto them with cane and boot
and palm of hand.

Unfortunately for them, he is accompanied
on his merciful errand by the Commandant,
who was created by the Lord to lick coolies
into lambs — without destroying their self-
pride ; a master of their language and their
ways ; just the wrong man to run up against
at the inception of mutiny. Much shouting
and confusion upon the entry of the O.C,
towards whom an unusual and menacing
movement of red-cheeked and foul-breathed

52 WITH THE CHINKS

coolies. In an instant the Commandant is on
top of the position, as well as on top of
several of the more aggressive of the
mutineers. Fists flash ; arms circle and
clinch ; and unclinch and circle again. Far
more fall by word of mouth than by swiftness
of arm. Cowardice and fear set in. Some
go down on their knees and " chin-chin." It
sweeps over them that the thing they de-
signed for their O.C. may be turned against
them. The mutiny is over.

The Orderly Officer notes in the Report
Book that evening: "6.30 p.m. Snow on
the ground. B Company did extra drill
outside Bunk-house. All well."

XIV

At noon the thermometer stood at 55°.
This sudden and satisfying warmth was a
signal for a truce between officers and men,
a better understanding between fathers and
sons. Fraternization occurred on all parade
grounds. Officers looked happy, their faces
losing that set and serious expression which
they can't help wearing in the teeth of an un-
speakable wind ; they grinned and rubbed
their moustaches and twirled their canes,
proudly observing their men at play. Life
was indeed a jolly thing at noon. The coolies
poured into the open, emptying the Bunk-
houses. They gathered in knots, and guessed
at the life to come. They went arm in arm,
and hand in hand, praising the C.L.C. Many
engaged the services of scribes and wrote to
their relations, saying that they had become
soldiers and went about in waterproofs and
wore fur-lined helmets and were held in great
esteem by the Foreign Devil.
The p'aitous dwelt on the authority given
53

54 WITH THE CHINKS

to them ; the corporals and sergeants spoke
of the power into which they had come.
Never a man but exhorted his male relations
to volunteer. On the parade ground an
official of the camp preached to the multi-
tude, who elbowed one another the better to
hear the words spoken which were of their
native tongue. The drift of his speech was
hardly followed, but it was made plain to
them that their destiny was fortunate, in so
far that they were going to see much of the
world and to be given a chance to get rich
quick, their rate of pay in France being a
franc a day, which, at present exchange, was
equivalent to about thirty coppers ; this in
addition to a separation allowance for their
families. It was difficult to understand, said
the preacher, why some among them desired
to return to the old life, the narrow village
life, to the burden and squeak of the wheel-
barrow, unless it was because of their women-
folk, who were unreasonable and stiff-necked
and against whom he warned them.

Following parade in the afternoon there
were inter-company tugs-o'-war, which
further cemented the good feeling now exist-
ing between officers and men, the latter

JANUARY 55

receiving personal encouragements from the
former in the many fierce battles that were
fought between four o'clock and sundown.

Even at sundown it was so mild that the
coolies sat in groups here and there in the
camp, smoking and gossiping.

The now familiar chimney stood stark and
black against the clear winter sky ; in the
background the zigzag roofs of the disused
machine shops ; in the foreground a bluish
floor of concrete on which the groups of
maroon-coated figures appeared like islands
on a sea. If an airman from anywhere had
suddenly come on the scene he would prob-
ably have taken it for a prison camp ; the
barbed-wire enclosures, the sentries, the kit-
less unarmed inmates ; a prison camp most
mercifully run, the habitat of happy full-
bellied prisoners.

XV

The police, Chinese ex-soldiers, are equipped
with stentorian voices. Their voices quiver
through the coolies and make the parade
ground tremble.

It is most distressing to wake up in the
morning in a bed which it has taken all night
to get warm and to hear these voices ringing
as it were against the dawn. It means one
has to turn out.

Many of us are laid up with sore throats,
due not only to shouting, but to the dust
storms which sweep over the camp at all
hours of the day. Huskiness is a chronic
state with us. Conversation in the mess,
never fluent at the best of times, is not
aided thereby. Nor is the temper. Dis-
agreements are now common. To-day the
Report Book was much abused. In a
moment of confidence Captain Linen assured
me he was "fed up to the teeth." And he
proceeded to shell the camp with criticisms.

No one concerned was left with a leg to stand

56

JANUARY 57

on. The mess came in for drum-fire. He
distinguished between the men and gentle-
men among us ; he divided us into eggs and
bad eggs; "a mess of lance-corporals," he
said. But that surely is our whole charm.
We are from all parts of the Far East and of
all classes. We grade from a pinkish weak-
jawed voluble Irishman who chatters about
"gurgling his throat after shiftin' round with
them dirty coolies " to Captain Linen himself,
who parades in spurs, smokes Egyptian fags,
speaks nothing but persuasive Mandarin to
the natives and nothing but King's English
in the mess. A seasoning of blasphemy is
but a sign of good breeding. Also, Captain
Linen has been in the army umpteen years.
On all matters military he is looked to as
one having indisputable knowledge. Of an
evening he will sit on the edge of a desk in
the cosy room and reply, cigarette in hand,
to a bombardment of questions. Some of us
are exercised as to our proper behaviour in
Blighty; which officers we should salute in
the street, and which disregard; whether,
being in a sense non-combatants, we are to
equip ourselves with revolvers ; if we should
buy our tunics, slacks, etc., in Ordnance, or

58 WITH THE CHINKS

have them made at our private tailors' ; with
what degree of hauteur we should ireat
N.C.O.'s and privates ; and other points of
military etiquette. Three months hence we
shall have forgotten that we ever asked such
questions, and do we remember, it will be
with a sentiment of shame — shame at our
simplicity and ignorance; but it is always
the way with these things.

If a man has the opportunity to inquire
into a new departure in life, he is a fool not
to do so — and to interrogate as simply as
possible. Of course, we know that a captain
carries three stars on his sleeve and a strafe
or two up it ; but we were ignorant, until
Captain Linen told us, that a major is
designated by a crown. We have learnt a
good deal, but not enough, I fear, to prevent
some astonishing " breaks " in BUghty.

I hear that C.L.C. officers, owing to their
lack of training, are apt to flatter the ranks
on occasion and offend the powers that be.
So that we may not be classed with stinking
fish, the Assistant- Adjutant of camp — a man
who knows, having become an officer at
home in the normal way, escaping the in-

JANUARY 59

cubator process associated with the C.L.C. —
has drawn up for us a list of Do-Nots, which
list we zealously peruse nightly before retire-
ment.

XVI

As I write in our dormitory, where Harris
lies on his bed close by, muttering Russian
verbs to himself — if Harris survives the
C.L.C. he plans to make his fortune some-
where in Siberia — the sound of a cataract of
voices reaches my ears ; it is something like
the rushing of waters. The coolies are ex-
pressing hunger ; the coolies, crowding round
the camp cooks who are carrying wooden
boxes of steaming rice from the kitchens
to the Bunk -houses. Their hunger and
capacity are on a par. All day donkeys
drag cartloads of coolie provisions into
camp.

Only fathers of large families know what
a joy it is to have healthy happy children.
One child was foolish last night. It happened
in Bunk-house ii. The story is inconsecu-
tive. A coolie, asleep on the top shelf, un-
wittingly fell therefrom and considerably
altered the shape of his head. This is possible.
Probable it is that a shindy occurred and one

60

JANUARY 6i

or more of the combatants shoved a common
enemy over the brink.

At times the Chinese are extraordinarily
careless of a fellow-creature's suffering. They
left him lying on the floor bleeding through
the ears, and altogether an indehcate sight.
In which condition he was found by the
Orderly Officer, and duly conveyed to the
hospital ; where I saw him this morning,
just the two eyes peeking from a white ball
of bandages ; as though he had been in
battle.

Our Uttle hospital is the busiest little place
of its kind in North China ; and over it
presides a model little doctor, neat and un-
tiring, and a very nest of sweet persuasions.
Most of the patients are throat or eye or
stomach or circumcision cases. They sit or
lie on camp beds in what would be to us un-
comfortable positions ; never a man lies with
legs outstretched on the flat of his back ;
evidently such a natural "Western" position
would not induce quietude and reverie ; the
legs are always screwed up or tucked away,
and the back bent. They look at you with
just a little less animation than a coolie
looks at his officer on parade. They look

62 WITH THE CHINKS

at you with quiet unquestioning eyes — the
eyes of a sleepy trustful dog.

To-day four companies, i.e. close on 2000
men, passed through the doctor's hands. It
was final examination day. Every coolie is
medically re-examined a few days before
departure. About 6 per cent were rejected
entirely owing to eye troubles. At sunset this
6 per cent stood a little apart from their
successful mates ; in the shadow of the
familiar chimney they stood disconsolately
expectant, keenly enough aware of their fate,
asking one another helplessly why the light
of the new life was suddenly extinguished,
why they had to return to the old meagre
struggle for existence, why they should be
made to lose face with their kinsmen and
fellow-viUagers, just because the lids of their
eyes were inflamed. They were to be sent
home by to-night's train ; and the happy
others, knowing this, went up to them, when
their officer's eye was turned the other way,
and gave them each a few coppers, at the
same time bidding them farewell.

I happened to be the officer in charge, but
I affected not to see these secret gifts and
sad good-byes.

XVII

"All Companies and the Reserves will
parade at 2 p.m. to be inspected by the
Superintendent and to be photographed."
So ran to-day's orders. It is the penultimate
stage in the long and complex process of
refinement which fits a coolie to go and do
his bit in France. During this process the
native comes in touch (sometimes in violent
touch) at many points with Western ingen-
uity ; he is submitted to much that is galling
to his passive equable spirit.

At the very outset the clothes are stripped
off him and he is made to stand naked before
a knowledgeable little Canadian doctor
(always in khaki) who handles him as though
he were a bit of dough, slapping him here
and there, and turning him over and doubling
him up and otherwise maltreating him ; all
to ascertain if he has a sound enough body to
work in the fields and by the canals of France.
As if he hadn't garnered the harvests of
twenty years in China ! As if he hadn't

63

64 WITH THE CHINKS

pushed and sailed a wheelbarrow with half
a ton on it all the days of his manhood !

The spoliation of his clothes he does not
mind, for he knows he is to get better. He
has no false notions about nudity ; besides,
he is not alone in his nakedness ; he is one
of a single file of perhaps a score of men.
To be robbed of his lifelong cultivated queue
is distressing, but he has been warned and
knows within him that it is for the best ;
had he a plait of hair dangling down his back
or screwed up in a bun under his cap, he
would be laughed at in the white man's
world, and to lose the personal product of a
lifetime is better than to be mocked.

There are abrupter stages in the process
which cause him anxiety. His breast is
pierced by a needle and liquid pumped into
him for no apparent reason ; equally un-
availing seems the act of scratching his arm
with the blade of a knife and spreading more
liquid over the bloody spots. Though high-
sounding explanations are vouchsafed he
cannot appreciate the virtues of moving his
arms and legs with mechanical precision or
of hmiting his outlook by making him look
for ever to his front, or of doing exactly the

JANUARY 65

same as 499 others at exactly the same
moment. It makes a machine of him ; it
trespasses upon his individuaUty. He sees
his whole life being conformed to a pro-
gramme, details of which are to be found in
the . guard-room. His wakeful hours are
taken from him, and whittled down from
knobby independence to polished bounden
duties. He is one of an obedient host in-
stead of a village free-thinker and liver.

He is a cipher. Nay, he is worse than
that ; he is No. 106,542 ; vide the wooden
tag that hangs from a button on his water-
proof ; vide also the brass band which is
riveted on his wrist.

It may be recorded to his credit that he
is proud of this ornament ; he never tries to
cut or unrivet it; he realizes dimly that it
is a symbol of his refinement, signifying a
revaluation of the values of life.

Detail for detail he finds himself clothed
like five thousand others ; a waterproof is
his to button up ; and he must needs explore
the mysteries of a button-hole.

Plant him five yards away and, if he isn't
remarkably tall or short, he is the living
image of his fellow. At least, in the old hfe,

66 WITH THE CHINKS

he was distinguishable from his fellow by
degrees of uncouthness. Again, to receive
exactly the same number of coppers per diem
is disturbing after the ups and downs of a
civilian cooUe existence. Many are the
minor irreconcilable things. To spend a day
in jail for an offence on the parade ground —
at any time a natural operation — would
seem to defy the most elementary laws
of justice. To be caned on the side for
saying something fresh and fraternal to a
brother in the ranks would surely belong to
the same category. To be forcibly taken to
hospital on the casual declaration of a
stomach-ache is simply absurd. To be sent
home because the lids of the eyes are in-
flamed is insane. A sequence indeed of un-
reasonable matters. He cannot see them as
a sequence. The waves that buffet him are
too large for him to descry the sea. But
over a sea he has sailed ; in the storm he is
vaguely conscious of having covered great
distances. He is now a long way from the
shore of the old life. In moments of calm,
when for example he is curled up on the top
shelf of his Bunk-house, he is aware of a
happiness in the new life ; he does not want

JANUARY 67

to go back ; the light of adventure is dawn-
ing in him ; his imagination quickens though
his fancies soon perish, for he has but weak
elusive facts and hearsays to base them on.
Most of the day he is mentally in a state of
mild coma. He cannot live up to the pace of
his hfe. Things have gone past him. The
changes have rushed and swamped him like
waves. A little while and he will awaken,
perhaps in France, and consider what has
happened to him ; he will cautiously explore
the new ground of his life ; he will relive the
days in Tsangkou Camp and the length of
the great voyage from China will contract,
and here and there the vivid stages, with
their concomitant scenes, will be visible.

But at present it is all blur and shouting
and the swishing of canes and swirls of dust
from the barren knolls and broken farm-
lands roundabout.

And this business of photography this
afternoon is calculated not least to mystify
him. He stands at attention, still as a stone,
forty minutes, an hour, an hour and twenty
minutes, while a Httle fur-capped Jap,
pinnacled on a scaffolding, plays peekaboo
behind a black cloth, waving his arms

68 WITH THE CHINKS

frantically now and again in an effort to
compress an odd 2000 men within visual
grasp of his bothering lens. Officers shout
and wave their canes. At last, everything
seems ready for something to occur. A
silence falls. Even the wind drops. The
httle Jap holds up his hand and lowers it a
moment later. It is all over. It is im-
possible to say what it is all about. It is no
more confusing but less tangible, more
mysterious, perhaps, than the process of
inoculation.

" J.T." party is now ready to go. Nothing
remains now but to mark time a few days
and then — to embark.

Then came Embarkation Day. "J.T." party
left camp about 9.30, to the blare of bugles
and the blast of crackers. Fully equipped,
looking less like labourers than China's first
contingent, they marched to the station a
few hundred yards away, where they were
entrained for Tsingtau. Before finally
leaving the parade ground they were allowed
to break ranks, and make purchases from the
stalls and shops of mushroom growth which
had sprung up around there overnight.
These sons of China, suddenly rich, indulged

JANUARY 69

their fondest likes. Singlets they bought,
and socks ; grey tunics and satin shoes ;
waist-band purses to hold their newly-earned
silver dollars ; caps and canes of Japanese
manufacture ; all sorts of useful and useless
knick-knacks ; and never a man but who
carried a linen sack in which he had flung
meat-pies and oranges, dried fish, and sundry
other kinds of " chow," to sustain him on his
voyage to the antipodes.

For once the Chinese flung from them
their habitual mask of indifference. Emotion
among them ran riot. Many were drunk with
excitement. Early in the morning they had
been bathed and given new clothes. That
had stirred them. Then had come the sudden
getting of wealth ; a round sum of so many
Mexican dollars, solid and heavy and imme-
diately touchable. For weeks they had done
uncommon things, the thought of which was
profoundly exciting. And the future lay
before them like a land of immense possi-
bilities. But thought of both the past and
the future came to them only subconsciously.
They gladly lived for the moment and made
a glorious thing out of life.

It was all in the spirit of a children's

70 WITH THE CHINKS

garden fete, at which money ran like water.
Proudly the parents stood apart, not un-
touched by the scene, yet not borne away,
for they were turning over in their minds the
troublesome hours to come : the entraining,
the embarkation, the allotment of the men
to their bunks, the suppression of undue
excitement on board, the checking of the
men, and this and that to do with shipping
an odd 2000 coolies to France.

A quiet day followed on the departure of
"J.T." party which, by the way, included
Redbrick whose Yankeeisms and repartee
will be missed by the mess ; as well as the
Russian who until the ninth hour was
tempted to return to his country and get
the Bolshevik government to recognize him,
voting, in the end, in favour of finding fame
in the C.L.C. ; not to speak of Captain Linen,
whose exemplary manners and " cricket "
spirit have been such an efficacious antidote
to our lance-corporal crudity. Others who
have gone with him will be missed, each in
his place — particularly at table where there
is considerable rivalry to sit at the head,
there being four heads in all. Why this
rivalry should exist is inexplicable, save

JANUARY 71

perhaps on the score that for a voluble chin-
wagger it is positively inspiring to speak to
two converging hnes of heads all looking in
his direction.

Harvie, the missionary and mountaineer
of Japan, has the gift of the gab, being as
facile in speech as he is on paper. At tififin
he flickered hke a moth around the flaming
question : Are those of us who have youth
and sound bodies justified in joining the
C.L.C. ?

" What you mean to say," cried Clarison,
" is, are we a bunch of bally slackers for not
going home straight and getting into some
O.T.C. ? "

Harvie said he didn't wish to put the thing
as bluntly as that,

" What I am driving at is, what's the
social position at home of a C.L.C. officer ? "

Medcork ventured — ostracization. A new
arrival, a Scot (known as Hackenschmidt,
presumably because he is a size larger than
Little Tich), scorned the notion :

" We're treated as any other wee officers
of the army and we work just as hard as
most." Hackenschmidt knows, because he is
clothed in khaki, having been at home with

72 WITH THE CHINKS

the coolies. " Our job," he went on, " is a
special job. None but a mon who has lived
out East could do it. All his civilian life
out East is a training. Remember that."

It was something worth remembering, to be
sure, and none spoke for a little while. And
then Clarison said — not inconsequentially :

" I consider a commission in the C.L.C. a
damned good billet." And he quoted Captain
Linen to the effect that C.L.C. life in France
was a desirable thing, carrying with it many
perquisites, such as periodical home -leave,
reasonable immunity from shells and bombs,
bathing in Calais, " busts " in Boulogne, and
even a week-end. in Paris.

And he spoke of the French girls he would
parley with and the EngUsh nurses he would
meet. The which Hackenschmidt somewhat
palliated by warning him that the lassies in
France were usually too busy to flirt.

" And it's as well to bear in mind that
there's a war on. Oh, ay, there's a war on."

XVIII

And still the coolies come, two train-loads a
day, although I hear that recruiting is
stopped. And the new-comers are nothing
different from their departed brothers ; given
to open-mouthed wonder, and to childish
excitements which, after a while, one ceases
to share within one, save in extreme cases,
where the coruscating eye and open mouth
and gleaming teeth have an undefinable
charm. It is difficult to move among the
new recruits, showing them how and in what
order to don their new unaccustomed clothes,
forming them into squads of fifteen, appoint-
ing a lance-corporal and leading them off
into their Bunk-houses, without reflecting
on the vast change that is coming over their
lives, in what a turmoil of surprise and
expectancy must their minds be ; some-
thing akin, I suppose, to the emotion of a
boy on his arrival at a boarding-school ; the
unknown delightful to him, the confidence
that he is going to be well-treated, immediate

73

74 WITH THE CHINKS

guarantee of which he finds in his splendid
outfit. Yet in a clear sky of hopes and sur-
prises blows a wind of strangeness, touched
with an element of dread, the likelihood of a
great hoax, or of sudden expulsion and ignoble
return to village humdrum.

The Chinese is emotional, though leading
a normal life, treading the deep-rutted
ancestral path, he will not manifest emotion
save at exceptional moments. Here, of
course, we catch them as it were off their
guard ; their conscious reserve has been
rudely awakened ; they display deep feelings.
At first it is simple astonishment which
drives them to erratic movement, wild ges-
ture, all the abandon of a folk of southern
Europe ; and then, after a few days, the
distressing novelty passes and they slow
down to something of their old passivity,
some growing thoughtful of the hfe that is
gone, nostalgia not being infrequent among
them.

The coolie is as fond of his home as the
Englishman ; and he also can be a great
lover. Officers have told stories of coolies
suddenly bursting into tears and sitting down
in the ranks for no apparent reason. Not

JANUARY 75

sick, but homesick, is the explanation ; not-
withstanding it is not accepted on parade as
sufficient to justify a sedentary position.

One has only to live in China six weeks to
explode for oneself the theory that all
Chinese look alike. It can as reasonably be
said that all Italians look alike. One has
only to be in a North China coolie camp a
few days to become convinced that never
such a variety of faces existed as among the
Chinese. The practised eye fails to notice the
nursery characteristics of a Chinese face —
slanting eyes and yellowness — and looks for
differences in the shape of the head, in the
profile, in the size and quality of the eyes,
etc. A high cheek-bone is, perhaps, the one
common denominator. But there are ex-
ceptions to that ; chubby cherubic faces,
faces as round as an O, with cheeks as red
as a haw; and faces white and Western.
These latter not infrequently remind one of
some one one knows. Again and again I
have seen some distant friend looking at me
through the eyes of a coolie. It is not so
often a similarity of features as a similar
manner of glancing, a corresponding spiritual
light in the face.

XIX

The party that was to go at the end of the
month have given up hope of going before
the middle or end of February. A great dis-
appointment, over which some officers are
like to kick their heels, but it will not do them
the least good to raise a shindy.

Our fate is with the War Office, which is
not only preoccupied these days, but at the
other end of the earth.

" Our first experience with the War Ofiice,"
said a Canadian missionary, who has lain
sick of a fever for many weeks and who now
reappears looking like an alabaster image of
a man, as much fit to drill coolies as a deli-
cate nun.

" And now our last," added Medcork.

As usual those in authority know nothing,
for they want to make no promises. Clarison
has drifted from boredom into a beautiful
contentment with life. Each morning he goes
forth to his coolies with fresh enthusiasm ;
like a vicar visiting his flock. He puts words

76

JANUARY 77

of caution and encouragement into the mouth
of his interpreter, conve5dng that the longer
his sons are here the more efficient must they
eventually become, the better they will be
thought of in France, the more envied by
their colleagues already there. He crushes
their ardent desire to go, taunting them
with an unpatriotic impulse to walk before
they can stand, to leave their country just
because they are in camp. He sums up
irresistibly, averring that a good thing once
got seems all the better for having waited
for it. Clarison's spirit is admirable ; an
example to the mess.

He is deeply attached to his sons and goes
about the business of bringing them up with
a quiet conviction in the splendour of their
future. In return he is rewarded with
obedience. Even his sons refuse their pay,
thinking it comes out of his own pocket and
wishing him to benefit by their modest
incomes. Five coppers each per diem, and
these they would return to him, and he must
needs use a cane in order to compel them to
keep the money for their own pleasure. No
longer has he need to fine for insubordination
or to cane for something worse ; nothing

78 WITH THE CHINKS

goes wrong ; and nothing much happens.
For when an officer has slipped from boredom
into a beautiful contentment with life, he no
longer spits fire at his men or slashes or
stamps or does anything of a magnetic nature
calculated to produce swift motion ; he is
not a friend of inertia, nor is he an enemy ;
he has compromised with his virgin instinct
to make machines of his men ; he suffers
their tendency to take it easy.

Others of a stiffer fibre, like Harris, resist
the decadent ravages of time. Harris, being
a journalist, knows human nature.

" Give a man something different to do
every day," he cries, " and he will never
grow stale."

Notwithstanding, staleness is creeping over
his company — like paralysis. He has been
too long at them ; they do not quicken at
his command ; no longer do the p'aitous
tremble and the men bow down. They know
their CO. too well. They have discovered
in him a human kindness and are trading on
it for all they are worth. Of which, of
course, Harris is innocent. He alternates
drill with calisthenics, relay races with tugs-
o'-war ; he makes his company form fours

JANUARY 79

at all points of the compass ; march back-
wards ; goose-step; do jiu-jitsu; he
harangues them in several languages ; he
listens to their innumerable complaints and
suggestions ; he makes and breaks promises ;
he imposes sweeping fines ; gives efficiency
prizes ; in fact, does every mortal thing to
maintain their interest in camp existence.
But staleness is like a plague — difficult of
prevention. The ginger is going out of their
manual drill ; the sparkle out of their march-
ing. There is a tendency to take things easy.
A little while, and Harris will notice it ; and
then he, too, will join in the choice denuncia-
tion of the War Office ; which, we may
hazard, is not responsible. Nobody is re-
sponsible. Nobody has ever been responsible
for any of the disasters of this war.

XX

One night towards the end of the month the
monotony of camp life was magnificently
broken, and in a (for me) quite unexpected
manner. I was having a pipe in my bed-
room, talking Russian literature with Harris,
when about six o'clock came the sound of
police whistles continuously and excitedly
blown. I rushed downstairs and carried on
with several officers, who had run out into
the nippy night hatless, and (what seemed to
me a foolish omission) stickless, towards the
seat of disturbance. Arrived there, we found
one of the Bunk-houses in an uproar ; a
confusion of shouting coolies who were being
clubbed and tumbled by the sentries, some
showing fight, but most trying to get out of
the way and only getting in one another's
in the attempt. An arc lamp shed a pale
bluish hght on a liquid mob of figures
which, like a rapid, fell and rose angrily over
a bed of boulders. It was plain that the

native police had lost their heads, and in the

80

JANUARY 8i

effort to avert a peril were bruising and
blood-letting without respect of persons or
flesh. Among us was one who spoke Chinese
and he soon got out of an hysterical sentry
that a mob of coolies had rushed a certain
gate-keeper, obtained the key to a back
entrance to the camp and fled over towards
the moonUt hills before the latter could
recover himself sufficiently to effect the
capture of a single insurrectionist. How
many had escaped he did not know. Some
said hundreds, others thousands. At all
events it was a successful coup ; and it went
without saying he had nothing to do with it.

" Then," cried an officer, " why the devil
are you knocking these men about ? "

He did not know ; and, at the time, no
more was said, for he was impressed into a
chase-and-capture party which was hurriedly
improvised and which set out after the mis-
creants at the double. The latter had a
start of at least a quarter of an hour, which
enabled them to scatter widely over the up
and down sand-dunish country which lies
between camp and a range of rocky barren
hills distant about forty li.

Being pathless and roadless and full of

82 WITH THE CHINKS

channels and j&ssures and gullies, as though
it had been trench-dug and then shelled with
high explosives, the country was not quickly
covered and a moon which cast deceptive
shadows did not help to quicken the chase.
But, unluckily for them, the Chinese are not
good short-distance runners ; that is, they can
run most of the day, but are left by us when
it comes to sprinting ; and to sprinting it
came, for many fatigued and peace-seeking
officers. Few men regret an adventure of
this kind, but all have their notions about
the time it should take place. Six o'clock ;
tea ; a pipe ; gossip. As he ran panting,
Harris poured out execrations on the heads of
coolies in general, at the same time backing
his own physique against the physique of
any man who ran in the chase. He pro-
phesied the coming of his second breath,
with which he swore to catch the fleetest
absconder. Stragglers were soon overtaken ;
breathless and bewildered wretches, who as
soon as they were caught went down on their
knees and knocked their heads on the
ground. The mercy they asked was not
shown. The camp poUce, outnumbering the
captives, cast them down and sat upon them

JANUARY 83

and beat them as one would beat a carpet —
a thing of neither head nor foot. After which
they were bound together and sent back to
camp. This took place on the confines of a
village which rang with the noise and excite-
ment of the chase ; some searched perfectly
peaceable huts, which gave forth howhng
dogs and gaping natives, but nothing like
escaped units of the C.L.C.

A brief confab of chasers at this point
resulted in the adoption of deploying tactics.
It was found possible to beat up a wide extent
of country with a score of officers and police.
So, from the village, out and on towards the
hills, each man pushed his lonely and peril-
ous way, hallooing now and again to keep in
touch with his confederates. For a consider-
able distance we chased imaginary coolies
over an imaginary way of escape and, nothing
transpiring, the futility of these moments of
life was brought home to us ; and we would
have given up hope of being heroic and
reaching the hills (whither, of course, ban-
dits, coolies, criminals and the like hasten in
time of trouble), when one among us stumbled
against a pile of something soft and cushion-
like, which on inspection proved to be cast-

84 WITH THE CHINKS

off maroon-coloured waterproofs. About ten.
It was indeed paper, and tally-ho ! We now
skirmished through a grove of mulberry
trees. The branches extended their curving
arms and crooked fingers in the moonlight.
And then came an exciting moment. We
sighted shadows moving swiftly towards us
from our left. They came on, dodging the
trees, three — four — six of them. " CooUes,"
I thought, " who have lost their sense of
direction." Followed a silent chase of the
" enemy," from tree to tree. It was very
curious. As much as they desired escape
they appeared attracted towards us, chasing
rather than being chased, yet hesitating —
till I cornered one between a tree and a
frozen creek, the solidity of which he did not
seem anxious to test. I don't know whether
they or we had deployed in the wrong
direction. But the chasers were chasing one
another among mulberry trees on a moon-
light night in January. It was rather
absurd.

From this point, the chase lost its salt, the
adventure its savour. We plodded rather
than sprinted over thousands of yards of
broken ground, frequently losing sight of

JANUARY 85

camp whose lights were splendidly visible so
long as one could get high enough to see
them. A roundabout route brought us back
to camp in time for a late dinner. Stories of
the hunt were strung together and it was
ascertained that not more than a score of
the runaways had been recovered. These
were snugly housed in jail. The remainder,
approximately eighty, were goodness knows
where ; and it is unlikely we shall ever know.

They are fools to go, as their more patient
fellows will tell them in the years to come.
They run away from immediate security of
life ; from good food and good clothes and
much rest ; also, they slip the opportunity
to see the world and make money, and what
more could a coolie desire ?

It may well be asked : if these things are
apparent to the coolies, why do they plan
and effect an escape in the spirit of prisoners
circumventing their warder ? The exact cause
is unknown. This much is determined : a
malicious report has lately gained credence
among them that the last two transports
were either torpedoed, or captured by the
Germans ; a story, needless to say, entirely
baseless. Chinese of this class are an im-

86 WITH THE CHINKS

pressionable folk ; a ringleader (possibly in
the pay of the enemy, for there are Germans
at large close by) could without difficulty so
work on the minds of many that they should
come to believe that escape from camp was
as good as escape from death. It is said that
the coolies cried " Save your life," " Save your
life," as they rushed the sentry. Be this as
it may, the incidence of the Chinese New
Year is not to be overlooked. New Year is
general settlement time ; all debts are paid ;
all feuds are settled ; the family gathers
round and feasts and merrymakes. It is a
favourite festival, deprivation of which makes
a Chinese fretful. The more so if a coolie,
instead of being embarked on the new life
that is promised him, is detained in camp
well-nigh a moon awaiting the arrival of a
transport.

One could moralize on the matter until
sunrise. Suffice it that our sons were well
harangued to-day ; they were humoured
into good temper and remain simple and
happy, which is their true nature. We are
not in mourning for the loss of our children ;
after all we have so many ; and it is best to
be rid of bad eggs.

JANUARY 87

The following night there was a repetition
of the affair, though on a smaller scale, and
more cunningly carried out. A score escaped
by making a hole in the roof of their Bunk-
house, whence a climb down to the road
which half encircles camp, was a simple
matter. The escape was complete, no alarm
being given by the sentries ; which was
perhaps a good thing, as the fatigued fathers
were enabled to pass the night without dis-
turbance. Clarison, to his mortification, was
the chief loser.

" What are the fellows playing at ? " he
cried indignantly at breakfast. " I was so
fond of them and they were so fond of me ;
there was not the faintest mist of misunder-
standing between us."

Clarison, losing none in the previous coup,
had prided himself that neither nostalgia
nor enemy machinations could deprive him
of the weakest of his sons. He was sorely
put out.

" Och, aye ! " said Hackenschmidt, " the
lads are verra homesick."

Then Medcork, after his manner :

"You see; in a week we won't have a
CQplie left in camp."

88 WITH THE CHINKS

" What happens to us, then ? " asked
Harvie, much disturbed,

Goodyear ventured to say that even if the
fathers were childless they would in the end
get landed in France. Medcork made the
tame remark that in any case we were
bound to get landed. Goodyear persisted
that our fate was in the hands of God.
None in mess daring to dispute this, a silence
fell ; and the fathers meditated the ingrati-
tude of certain of their sons ; and when
conversation sprang up again, it centred on
the reason why they had run away. Accusa-
tions were made of unnecessary cruelty ; the
imposition for instance of fourteen days' fine
for losing a cap, and imprisonment for arguing
the point with a native N.C.O., exposure on
certain days to the north wind, and so forth ;
at which Clarison held up his hands in horror,
saying that moral chastisement such as
shaming a man before his company was much
more effective than bodily reprimand.

Lieutenant Hitard, who, after recovering
from being gassed in the early anxious days
of the war, was gazetted to the C.L.C., on
account of his knowledge of Chinese (many
others at home have, by the way, suffered a

JANUARY 89

similar fate for the same reason), and who is
an iron discipUnarian, having been " put
through it " himself as a Tommy, laughed at
Clarison's kindly dogma.

" Nothing," laid down Lieutenant Hitard,
" knocks anything into a coolie so well as a
nose-bleed." He is well practised at drawing
a coolie's blood at first slap.

" Giving a coolie a bloody nose, do you
mean to say ? " asked Harvie academically.

"A bit thick," some one commented in a
whisper.

" Och, mon," cried Hackenschmidt, " they
soon get over it and bear you no malice,
either."

The truth of this would have undoubtedly
been challenged by Clarison had he not been
in a weak position, having lost so many men
the night before.

XXI

With the spirit of unrest abroad, it is clearly
the duty of the officer of the night guard to
pay frequent and unexpected visits to the
Bunk-houses. It may be his luck to nip an
escape in the bud. At any rate, he now goes
his rounds looking for trouble. In this frame
of mind he is likely to frighten innocents
with his menacing approach and presence.
Stealthily he lifts the latch of a Bunk-house
and peers within, thinking to frustrate some
daring plot at the psychological moment.
It is perhaps with a sense of disappointment
that he sees how snugly Chinese can pack
their bodies on shelves and sleep peacefully,
mostly on their backs, with not two inches
between them to spare. Hundreds and
hundreds of them, for the most part capped
and coated, with their shoes stuck in racks,
neat and orderly. A few have taken off their
clothes and lie naked, with a blanket under
them, and their waterproof thrown over them
for cover. Unaware, and if aware, careless,

90

JANUARY 91

of his presence, they turn over in their sleep,
one, it may be, wriggling to his knees re-
arranging his narrow bed and collapsing into
unconsciousness. He may be squinted at by
half-open bloodshot eyes, but the eyes will
not take cognisance of him. Some lie with
their hands dangling over the shelf ; they
are snoring horribly ; it does not seem to
matter. Like no man he has known ; like
no animal he can imagine. Others are com-
pletely wrapt in their coats, head and all,
mummified.

Heads next to feet, and feet next to heads ;
shelves of bodies generating heat. A small
oil lamp at either end of the tomb. It is
indeed a tomb of the living, ghostly lit.
Perhaps in one corner, on the second shelf,
three dots of light which move and a wisp of
smoke, denoting life. Three coolies in confab,
sitting close together on their heels, mumbling
in monotone an endless triologue.

For all he knows, they are discussing
escape ; wakeful ringleaders of all those
asleep and snoring ; he regrets his ignorance
of their language ; and leaves them. In
another house he may find more activity,
more wakefulness, more attention to his

92 WITH THE CHINKS

presence. Grins may greet him, he may
have things said to him. One may be
straining his eyes over some Chinese novel ;
another may have squatted down near a
lamp to write a letter. A plump little
specimen may reach out at him from the
floor and grasp his ankle playfully or hold
and shake his stick ; with no word but the
silent welcome of a smile ; with no intention
but a child's ; gentle, comforting, inexplicable.
By and by he returns to the guard-room,
confident that to-night there is no spirit of
unrest abroad.

XXII

A FOOTNOTE to recent orders reminded
officers that the recreation of coolies off
parade was as important as the business of
drilling them. Since when there has been
considerable head-scratching over the most
politic manner of recreating our sons. Five
o'clock tea and a tango on the top shelf of
the Bunk-house met with well-merited de-
rision. Mr. Goodyear suggested that more
valuable use of the time could not be made
than to preach the gospel ; he pictured the
conversion to Christianity of his entire com-
pany.

" A wide field for a missionary, quite un-
tilled ! I don't know why it didn't occur to
me before," he said, with the air of one who
has made a great discovery.

But his enthusiasm cooled when some one
pointed out that he would have to preach
the gospel through an interpreter, he not
knowing a dozen words of Chinese. Japanese
he could speak like a native.

93

94 WITH THE CHINKS

" But what good is that ? Like Greek
speaking to Roman." And forgetting all
about recreating the coolies he began to
talk about the helplessness of an officer
ignorant of the lingo. " Why," said he
in Canadian-intoned English, "I can't help
saying there are many times when I would
give anything to smack a coolie in the face,
but I dare not for he might not be aware
why I struck him, and if he asked me I
should not be able to explain. If a man be
punished and know not why, he is punished
to no avail."

Mr. Goodyear confessed, however, that
once, perhaps twice, anger had driven him
to Uft his hand against his fellow-creature ;
he had regretted the act and shaped an
apology which he would have assuredly
made, had he been able to make it in person.
("Damned good thing he doesn't know the
language," commented Lieutenant Hitard a
little later.) Again, he considered his noc-
turnal visits to the Bunk-houses lost their
spice, nay, inspired distrust and a sense of
espionage, because he could not chat with
his men in Chinese.

" I go into those evil-smelling places, and

JANUARY 95

prowl about silent and gloomy as a sphinx,
as though I would not willingly speak with
the least of my sons, and let him know
that I had his lot in my mind, comfort
him if need be and encourage him to have
patience till the transport come. I would
try to paint for him the life to come ; how
on his return from the pilgrimage to France
he would be treated in his own land as
one of the elect ; how he could turn his
military training to great advantage by
becoming a soldier of China, a unit of a
powerful army, which would rid the rich
province of Shantung of the covetous Japanese
for a generation at any rate. A glorious aim,
which he would do well to bear in mind."

Returning to the recreation problem,
Clarison suggested such indoor pastimes as
tiddle-y-winks, dice-throwing and coin toss-
ing, the Chinese being passionately fond of
gaming of all kinds. But the idea carried
with it hints of internecine trouble, so it was
turned down. Harvie submitted that the
initiation of evening classes for the study of
English and French would both relax the
coolies and refine them. Hackenschmidt,
who plays the violin, foreshadowed for his

96 WITH THE CHINKS

company a series of afternoon and evening
concerts, to embrace both the classics and
ragtime, with a savouring of free adaptations
from Chinese melodies. Branch, a cock-sure,
lay-down-the-law individual, who recently
returned from up-country, where he was
engaged in recruiting coolies, and who is
something of a water-colourist, proposed an
exhibition in his company's Bunk-house of
Chinese landscapes.

So great was the diversity of suggestions
that none was adopted, and the executive,
in desperation to get the new order carried
out, laid down that coolies, when off parade,
should be amused with football, tug-o'-war,
and leap-frog; all admittedly manly sports,
but sports which are played after dark only
with attendant risks and difficulties.

"Aside from the fact," grumbled Clarison,
"that it is deucedly awkward to umpire a
game of soccer when 250 are playing on each
side."

XXIII

Being a lover of a good polemic, I delighted
to hear Lieutenant Hitard and Harvie raise
their voices over the question whether or not
the Chinese coolie is possessed of the finer
emotions. Neither disputant attempted to
define the latter^ — ^which would have been
well for the clarity and orderliness of the
argument — and before they had gone very
far I gathered that they were wrangling not
about emotions at all, but about traits of
character. Lieutenant Hitard would not
credit the coolie with any sense of gratitude,
with any good faith, with any trustworthi-
ness.

He said it was all very well to idealize
them — that is to place them on a moral level
with the white man — in camp, where the
conditions of life were as near perfect as
possible ; that is they were heartily fed,
warmly clothed, and dryly housed : they
had no complaints, no deprivations to pit
the darkest instincts in them against the

H 97

gS WITH THE CHINKS

best. Like lions they lay down with the hart
and the lamb so long as they were contented.
Empty their bellies and let the north wind
blow on them and the rain of Flanders lash
them and they roared Uke the ungovernable
beast. In France, where, for all the Press
eulogies about the perfect arrangements made
for the rationing of the C.L.C., an abundance
of rice was not always obtainable, and where,
of course, the weather was hopelessly variable,
refusals to go out to work, resulting in riots,
were not infrequent. Hitard gave several
examples from his own experience. And he
warned Harvie he would find out the thing for
himself.

" There isn't a spark of gratitude in a
coolie ; deprive and discomfort him, as I
have already described, and he'll forget
everything decent and indecent that you ever
did for him. Being primitive he lives com-
pletely in the moment. His memory — such
as it is — serves him only for bad, not for
good. So long as you treat him well he will
remember you ; turn your back on him and
he will forget you ; maltreat him and he will
show his teeth." Hitard leaned back in his
chair (it was after dinner in the cosy room)

JANUARY 99

and pulled at his pipe with an air of " the
argument is done," thinking that his oppo-
nent had not a leg to stand on.

As indeed he hadn't, the academic fellow ;
but not to be silenced he insisted on his first
principle that there is a fund of good in every
man, be he Cockney or Caucasian, cannibal
or coolie.

" It only needs to be drawn upon, like a
bank account, in order to be profitably spent.
Devotion and daring can be purchased — the
two cardinal virtues of the Westerner — ^they
are instinct in every coolie that ever came
into this camp ; and there is no reason why
we should not cultivate them in him to such
a point that mere rain and hunger should
not cancel his loyalty."

The mess admired Harvie's rhetoric but
not the force of his argument. Hitard, not
wishing to destroy Harvie's faith in the
innate soundness of coolie nature — a beauti-
ful faith to be sure, which may or may not
meet with disillusionment — ^began to talk
inconsequentially of the pleasures of Paris
and Boulogne, which is always a favourite
topic of mess conversation.

XXIV

One night, not long before our own Em-
barkation Day, came suddenly the sound of
police whistles. The centre of disturbance
lay in the hospital. One of the inmates, a
surly criminal type, was howling within like
a wild cat and rushing about gaily breaking
everything humanly breakable. He wanted
to be sent home and decided that the Ad-
ministration would not tolerate a madman
for many hours. So he feigned insanity ;
and with perfect success. He must now
admit, however, that it was rather a costly
manner of going about the business, for
before spending the night in jail, he had first
to be rendered unconscious and then bound
hand and foot. Clarison had the honour of
dealing the knock-out, "with a stick," that
equable-minded officer will add in his version
of the story, "nearly as stout as a baseball
bat." Had it been a Western cranium, it
would have cracked. A Chinese head stands
astonishingly more than a stiff blow.

JANUARY loi

If it had taken place elsewhere than in a
hospital where at least a score of our sons
lay sick and helpless, the incident would have
been welcomed by the mess as a source of
excitement, affording the amateur psycho-
logist a striking study in the histrionic powers
of the Chinese coolie. As it was, the poor
patients were paralysed with fright, and We
entered the ward to find many of them kneel-
ing naked on the floor praying to some
divinity or other to deliver them from the
madness of their fellow.

PART II

FEBRUARY

We style ourselves the O.K. party. We are
13 officers and 4200 coolies strong, 8^ com-
panies together with 5 interpreters and a
medical assistant. Of the officers, three
have seen service in France. Of the coolies,
about half have had a month's training in
camp ; the rest are quite new to the game.
My Company (E) is made up mainly of new-
comers. I prefer it thus. They have not had
time to get stale. They are " carrying on " in
the great adventure unhandicapped by cloy-
ing memories of misdemeanours in camp.
Yet they are not by any means a rabble. It
would be strange if I did not consider them
the most efficient company in the party. I
do. So does Clarison consider his B Com-
pany. I am glad to say Clarison is of our
party. His temper is so even ; his influence
over both officers and men so excellent.
"Not by any means a rabble," he will tell

105

io6 WITH THE CHINKS

you. "The march from camp to the station
was the first route march they had ever been
on. Ranks were not broken ; not even by a
horde of niggers who had gathered on the
roadside to sing and play for and show de-
formed Umbs to the newly -rich coolies."
You see the men had just received their
separation bonuses, and possessed on an
average $2.50 each. A fortune. They could
well afford to fling coppers to their less
fortunate countrymen. Imagine their gener-
ous gestures, their laughter with gleams of
teeth and tossing heads. They had not ex-
pected to get away so soon. Only a week in
camp. Brothers who took the plunge before
them had told of their long detention in
camp. A month, six weeks, and over the
New Year too, a season when they most
liked to gather round the family hearth and
festivate.

There they were, a column of 500 men
swinging down the road to Tsangkou with
the nonchalance and ease of seasoned troops.
No more hke a gang of labourers than a
Highland regiment. It was a delight to see
them leap into the goods trucks which were
to convey the battalion to Tsingtau — the

FEBRUARY 107

first brief stage in the long and often broken
journey to France. Some of them had never
seen the sea before. A mile or so of jolting
and a great blue sheet of water, smooth
and iridescent as the pupil of an eye, lay
stretched before them. Possibly the events
of the morning had been too numerous and
pressing to leave the mind free to wonder
and to meditate much more, but the miracle
of this infinite blue thing must certainly
have brought home to them, as nothing per-
haps had ever done, the inexhaustibleness of
the earth. Likewise, though in a lower key,
the sight of the ship after which they had
so often and so fondly inquired did surely
astonish them. To many, without doubt, it
was not a ship at all, but a part of the dock
(in which our Blue Funnel boat lay) set apart
and superior ; enterable by three gangways
preliminary to embarking on the vessel of
their imagination ; a colossal sampan, we
may picture it, capable of sailing them to
the seat of their labours in Whiteman's Land.
No wonder, then, that more attention was
paid to purchasing sweetmeats and cakes and
peanuts and fruit from the hawkers on the
dock than to an examination, never so super-

io8 WITH THE CHINKS

ficial, of the pretty grey mass of steel that
awaited her human cargo in Tsingtau Bay.

Company by company, the cooUes em-
barked. It was all done in most orderly
fashion. Hardly ever a man out of place in
the apparently endless files streaming into the
capacious boat up three gangways. On the
wharf were piled thousands of well-stuffed
kit-bags. Each coolie took one as he moved
towards the gangway. Its rich practical
contents he was not to explore until he lay
securely in his particular bunk, fore, aft, or
amidships, as luck placed him, with a strict
enough injunction not to stir therefrom until
he was told to do so by his commanding
officer. To most of them it was a house,
part of the quay, as I have already said, in
which the quarters were cleaner and roomier
and better lighted and heated than in camp.
There he stayed, bewildered but comfortable,
curiously examining the contents of his kit-
bag, while others of his kind were embarking
and being berthed in all parts of the ship.

By dusk they were mostly aboard and had
already had their first meal ; the lance-
corporals (or third-class gangers, as we are
told to call them now) falling in and marching

FEBRUARY 109

through the front and starboard galleys,
drawing rations for their men, quite as good,
if not better than they had been given in
camp. Abundant baskets of rice and tins of
boiled cabbage were indeed devourable after
the long cold wait on the quay previous to
embarkation. When darkness fell, making
the decks places of odd dangers with the
unexpected pipings and winches and scuppers
common to a cargo boat, there were few
coolies abroad. With full bellies and a sense
of security, they lay in their bunks, hundreds
of them in a hold. Confusion of mind as
well as physical fatigue drove them to sleep.
So many extraordinary things had happened
during the day. It was indeed a climax to
the sequence of upsetting novelties in camp.
I may hazard not one of them took thought
for the morrow. To-day was big enough
with events. A few of an adventurous turn
stole on deck after dark and bruised their
shins against ungiving steel.

II

Discharged duties of orderly of&cer from
II p.m. of the 25th to i p.m. this morning,
the 26th. Two hours during which the wind
steadily increased in violence. When I turned
in, a typhoon was shrieking aloft, with sleet
lashing the deck. Now and again a ghostly
figure would appear in the hatchway, hesitate
before the spectacle of the typhoon, become
hunched and glide to a retreat on the other
side of the deck. For these Shantung farmers
there were many strange moments during
this first night on board.

All day we lay on the wharf, the whole ship
now coated with ice. Many a coolie slipped
and fell, laughing and muttering words of
mockery to themselves, as is their childish
way. Official appointments were made to-day,
special sanitary and police squads being told
off to keep order and cleanliness on board.
The police were given uniforms and formid-
able sticks which, they were told, were for
the purpose of frightening, not of injuring,

FEBRUARY iii

their fellows. Our police are proud and
dignified : even they have been known to
give " beans " to some undesirable members
of the Cantonese crew with, of course,
disastrous results. The Cantonese and
Northerners are at loggerheads. It seems
to be a racial rather than a political anti-
pathy ; for our peaceable Shantung men
know next to nothing of politics, and have
but a vague conception of the whereabouts
and importance of Peking. Their village is
also their capital. And a few fertile acres of
their province is the world. Now, to be sure,
they are learning otherwise. They are coming
up against Cantonese in the flesh, and as the
Shantung men are immeasurably superior
physically they manage to more than hold
their own.

The matter of policing the ship is easy to
arrange. Our ist and 2nd class gangers
(old style : sergeants and corporals) officiate.
Used to authority for some days, they find
no difficulty in now exercising it to a greater
degree. Then, again, the clothes make the
man. And the lust of power is strong in
every coolie.

With the sanitary squad it is not such

112 WITH THE CHINKS

plain sailing. Not only doth dirt corrupt
the average Shantung man's house, but it is
never removed. They carry their lax habits
with them into camp, where the sweeping up
is done for them. They do not learn any
better until they get on board ship, where
they have to do their own cleansing. A
section of 15 men is detailed daily to restore
the sleeping quarters to a livable condition.
If the officer is not particularly careful in his
inspection, he will overlook the fact that
the "restoration" is quite superficial, orange
peel and papers and peanut shells, leek stalks
and other malodorous things being swept into
a corner and nudged under a board. Again,
if he spy after inspection he will probably
observe his sanitary squad shelling peanuts
on the floor that they have just cleaned.
Again, the decks and scuppers in the vicinity
of the men's quarters are apt to suffer indigni-
ties. It is enough to break the heart of the
British seaman : a passionate lover of clean,
smooth wood and polished steel. By dint of
dealing out severe punishment to offenders,
my company, at any rate, will learn to be
sanitary. I have ordered my police to arrest
any man who thinkingly or unthinkingly

FEBRUARY 113

litters the floor of the hold. The culprit will
be confined thereto and have a refuse barrel
strapped on his back. Above any quality of
man I know, a coolie hates to be ridiculed.
By wretchedness and ridicule they will come
to be clean. If cleanhness is next to godli-
ness, my coolies during the past 24 hours have
been on the highroad to Paradise.

Towards dawn of the twenty-seventh, the
wind weakened. At 6 a.m. the sun broke
through the dark ragged tail of the typhoon,
and the town of Tsingtau, with its clean-cut,
Rhenish buildings, became visible from deck.
The coolies crowded through the hatchways
and lined the scuppers, leaning on the deck
rail, wondering if after all they were on the
ship, if they were reaUy going to start their
long-delayed voyage to France. For a whistle
had blown, a whistle which made their ears
sing. A few minutes later and, to be sure,
they were moving away from the dock ;
as though a portion of the dock had become
detached and was drifting out to sea ; as
though (and this impression was even
stronger) the shore were receding from them.
And it went on receding until nothing was
left but a torn ribbon of hills, snow-clad.

114 WITH THE CHINKS

beautiful enough. The last, indeed, that
they were to see of China for many a moon ;
the last, probably, that some were ever to see.
The gale of the preceding 36 hours had
left a considerable swell in the China Sea.
We were hardly out of the harbour before
we began to feel it. It sent the coolies sneaking
to their bunks. It caught some of them mid-
way between deck and hatchway. It terrified
some so that they fell on their knees before
me and clasped their hands and bowed them
up and down, as they supplicate before
their gods. Had they been children they
would have cried. Being childish men, they
prayed for a remedy. I cured a few of the
youngsters (in my company there are boys
of 14 to 18) by laughing at them. The old
'uns, who took the matter dead seriously,
I sent to their respective holds. The decks
being quickly clear of men, I went down into
one of the bunk-holds amidships, where an
odd 150 of my company are quartered. I
could hear their groans before I got down
to them. Like a house of mild torture.
The majority had collapsed. A few, their
strength suddenly gone, lay on the boarded
floor, unable to climb into their bunks. It

FEBRUARY 115

was a spectacle of weakness. A handful — old
sea-dogs or those fortunate ones who are not
affected at sea — were assisting their brothers.
They showed the sort of spirit which makes
one positively love the Chinese — the Chinese
of Shantung at any rate. They are wonder-
fully good to one another in adversity. They
have warm hearts and willing hands. There
was something so eternally and touchingly
human about this business that whatever
vestige remained in me of the conventional
conception of the coolie quite disappeared.
I could and can no longer associate (primarily)
with the coolie the faintest idea of frigidity,
of yellow skin stretched over puny bones.
The red blood runs strong within them.
They are the backbone of China, whose body
one day shall be again politically and spiritu-
ally great.

The twenty-eighth was an uneventful day
at sea. A score or two of coolies, standing on
newly-begotten sea-legs, roamed about the
boat with a spirit of curiosity. They peered
into the engine-room as an excursionist might
peer into the mouth of an active volcano.
They hearkened to the clang and roar of
the reciprocating engines and shook their

ii6 WITH THE CHINKS

heads at the mystery of it all. They stood
in the fo'c'sle-head and watched for hours
the deliberate parting of the waters. They
fondly examined the winches and, like boys
at the mechanical age, unscrewed any nut
that would turn, not infrequently with re-
sultant escape of steam and a curse from the
Cantonese crew. They loitered in the galleys,
befriended the cooks, and watched the rice
bubbling and steaming in half a dozen enor-
mous cauldrons . In the holds they climbed up
into the topmost bunks and fondled the steel
plates and rivets of the decks. A Ufebelt
being provided for each man and to be found
in his bunk, he must needs put it on and
amuse himself. Defying their own police,
they ventured into forbidden places, the boat
deck for instance, where the boatswain
caught them and lashed at them with a davit
rope. Even they set foot on the ladder lead-
ing up to the captain's bridge and grinned at
the officer on duty. Do what they would, it
was mischievously done, done out of un-
restrainable curiosity ; never with thought of
giving the least offence. One could no more
punish them for it than one could prohibit the
springtime lark of a schoolboy. The officers

FEBRUARY 117

of the ship might openly scowl at them for
some minor breach of ship's discipUne, but
behind their backs, in the compact seclusion
of our Uttle saloon, they would laugh at the
infant ways of the coolies and say what jolly
good fellows they were.

Their simple, sunny natures make them
easy to handle. A laugh is cheaply pur-
chased. One has only to stand in the fo'c'sle-
head, lean on the deck railing, let a few coolies
gather around one, heave one's arm broadly
indicating the China Sea, say " kao pu km "
(good-not good ?), and shouts of laughter
and assenting cries of kao kao will greet one
graciously enough. Then, perhaps if one
lingers, " taking in " the scene in order to
satisfy a quickening sense of beauty, one
will presently find a coolie by one's side,
imitating one's own meditative pose, looking
out oversea in the same direction and glancing
at one surreptitiously now and again to see
if one is still looking. A little while, and
perhaps the coolie will edge a bit closer and
whisper a few words in a tone of great con-
fidence, whether of complaint or faith or in-
terrogation one knows not through ignorance
(how often deplored !) of their language.

Ill

We dropped anchor in the outer bay of
Nagasaki a little after midnight of the
twenty-eighth. For one coolie who noticed
(full moon as it was) the beauty of the most
fairylike harbour on earth, perhaps four
thousand commented on the fact that the
engines had stopped, that there were lights
flickering and reflected all around the ship,
and that those jagged-edged bulks, darker
than the night, lying to starboard and to
port, were land. Land ! The question was :
What land ? Many argued the point until
dawn (when the fishing sampans were gliding
out to sea with the tide), without coming to
a conclusion. At one hour of the morning
the decision was that the land was none
other than England, possibly France. But
the wiser laughed this to scorn, saying that
the voyage was a long one, and took more
than a moon. It was not until daylight came
and we were buoyed in the inner harbour,
the coaling barges clinging to us like so

ii8

FEBRUARY 119

many leeches, that the coolies knew we were
in Japan. Little men and women in indigo
black and blue kimonos squatted beneath
expansive cream sails on glinting coal, shout-
ing one to another and gesturing as the
rudder-men guided the barges against our
hull. No time was lost in emplacing ladders,
and the work of coaling proceeded to the
great amusement of the cooUes. They took
up positions fore and aft and watched the
little women pass on and up the ladder
basket after basket of coal — 4000 tons odd
of the same — loaded in less than twelve
hours. It was strenuous, high-pressure work.
It was pleasant — nay, something finer than
that, luxurious perhaps — to sit on the
boat deck with back propped against an
emergency-raft, smoking a cigarette or nib-
bling at a leek, while little men and women
sweated away — was it not for their sakes ?
Why, they had almost forgotten how to do
a spell of work. They had not had a spade
or a rake or a hoe or barrow handles in their
hands for a moon or two. There was a cer-
tain amount of labour to do on board : clean-
ing and patroUing, but that only fell on un-
lucky heads, It was not general. Life was

120 WITH THE CHINKS

not a bad thing. In a vain mood, they
wished their poor dear relations at home
could see them lazing away existence. To
some came the thought, like a distant peal
of thunder, that all this travelling was to
get somewhere just in order to work ; but
simultaneously on this parched conception
fell a fine rain of ideas springing from the
hope that with work in Whiteman's Land
would come riches and honour.

I went ashore after tiffin. Members of
my company foregathered at the gangway
and, after their manner, gave me a hearty
send-off, anxiously inquiring what time I
would return, if, indeed, I was not going to
desert them. I might have been the pro-
lific father of them for all their solicitude.
I observe that the farther they get from
friends and country the tighter they chng
to their Commander. Like a child crossing
a number of streets, each more crowded
than the other, their grip on the arm tightens
and tightens until it becomes the pressure
of utter reliance.

We left Nagasaki at 6 a.m., the lights
of the town, terraced among the hills, still
burning and now glinting through the faint

FEBRUARY 121

blue mist of the morning. There was not
an inch to spare on the forecastle deck for
the crowd of coolies. Few words passed
between them. They leant against one
another for warmth and silently watched our
departure, watched the silhouetting of the
cedared hills against the yet invisible sun,
watched the sea-gulls wheeling expectantly
over us. The intense beauty of the morning
quieted and charmed them unawares. And
the scent in the air, of camelUa and sandal-
wood, perhaps, made them breathe deep and
feel satisfied with life, they knew not why.
Never a coolie knew the cause of his con-
tentment : beauty and the magic of aroma
charmed them in secret. They were cheery
too. Plumb the depths of their simple
smooth minds and maybe they would tell
you why. One stage of the journey was
complete. They had arrived at and left a
foreign port. It mattered not where the
port was or who the people thereof. They
were getting on with the voyage.

If this idea was present with the coolies,
it was present a thousand times more
vividly with the officers. And it is high
time I said something of the latter. Of

122 WITH THE CHINKS

those that I have casually mentioned in this
diary only Clarison, Hackenschmidt and
Branch are aboard. The latter, who is a
linguist, has been in great demand, acting
interpreter-in-chief, busy from dawn to dusk
explaining to the sanitary squad their duties,
ditto to the police. I envy him his eloquence,
particularly when it comes to regulating
sanitation. The power of example may be
greater than that of precept. But it is not
so clean and nice. An officer ignorant of
the lingo is thrown back on physical illustra-
tion : that is, he must go down on his hands
and knees before his gangers, pick up orange
peel and peanut shells, and mop up that
which cannot be picked up, in order to illus-
trate how to keep clean the floor of the 'tween
decks. Having recourse to the official inter-
preters is useless. Useless and extremely
annoying. Not only do these young men
delight in misunderstanding, but in mis-
interpreting that which at least they but
half understand. And apparently they think
that once a battalion is embarked, all work
ceases, the entire day and night being devoted
to sleeping off an imaginary sea-sickness.
Yes, in interpretation. Branch has found his

FEBRUARY 123

level, and his cocksureness aids rather than
hinders him in this capacity. He has, how-
ever, talked too much. The aspirates of the
Northern dialect have disastrously loosened
his front teeth. The ship's doctor is going
to extract one to-morrow. To-day he is
laid up with toothache. It is well that the
sanitary squad is sufficiently instructed and
practised in its duties to carry on.

As for Hackenschmidt, this quaint little
non-pugiUstic Scot is our quartermaster.

"Aye," he will tell you, "and it is no
sinecure's job."

Apart from looking after the officers' bag-
gage, which is multitudinous, the quarter-
master's time is mostly spent selling peanuts,
cigarettes, and sugar to the coolies at an
unconscionable profit. He has opened a
canteen in the port galley, and tp-morrow
opens a branch establishment in the star-
board. The file of cooUes waiting to pur-
chase from his canteen sometimes extends
to half the length of the boat, quite blocking
up the galleys, to the disgust of the ship's
cooks, carpenters and engineers. The chief
carpenter, it may be noted, has had to make
him half a dozen wooden coffers in order to

124 WITH THE CHINKS

contain all the coppers he has taken : an
impressive mass of metal which he plans
selling to the Minister of Munitions at con-
siderably more than face value. Hack's
obsessing aim in life is to get rid of his stores.

" Oh, crumbs," he says, " they're a blessed
nuisance. I'll never be quartermaster again."

Weak on figures, he faints before calculating
the profit on a lakh of Rooster's or Pride of
China's.

As for Clarison, I regret to have to record
that that gallant gentleman will be seen no
more for the rest of the voyage across the
Pacific. He " went under " with scarlet
fever a few leagues outside Nagasaki har-
bour. He now lies, equable minded as ever,
in the isolation hospital amidships, and there
he will stay in unrelieved loneliness until we
drop anchor in some Canadian port. A poor,
most undeserved start in the great adventure
for so gentle a man. His coolies inquire
fondly after him. He is grieved not to be
among them ; to manage and care for them
at this above all times. Two officers, a
languid sunny Scot and a lanky hollow-
eyed graduate of Virginia University, who
shared a cabin with him, are also temporarily

FEBRUARY 125

interned. They read and sleep away the
time in an isolated cabin labelled " Females'
Hospital," suffering for the sins of the gentle
Clarison. Albeit, they are not downhearted,
being buoyed up with the conviction that
prematurely they are being called upon to
make the great sacrifice. They transmit
reassuring messages to their gangers, who
are concerned about their absence.

Even first-class gangers, who are men of
intelligence, believe in the infallibility of
company commanders. They regard them
as gods who need not sleep and know not
sea-sickness. An officer off colour is an
anomaly. Thus the continued absence of
Clarison is explained away by the theory that
either he has an inordinate amount of clerical
work to do indoors or else he is spending
the days and nights in prayer and fasting in
order to humour Providence into maintaining
a calm sea. Company commanders are well
aware of this theory, and do all in their
power to support it. In calm weather it is
easy enough to give an impression of in-
falUbility. With a heavy beam sea running,
it is not. Sick and unsteady, the officer
shambles along on his rounds of inspection.

126 WITH THE CHINKS

lamely acknowledging the salutes of sentries
who have the courage to look as iU as they
really are. With his gorge rising, he descends
to the 'tween decks, whose atmosphere is
nigh unbearable in the best of weather.
Partly to save his face should he lose it, he
soundly rates some unhappy coolie who,
collapsed at the foot of the stairs and bent
double, is doing the thing which above all
things he most dreads to do — in sight of his
men. Thickly muttering a few syllables of
broken Chinese, which his first and second-
class gangers pretend to understand, he
steadies himself and signals to the attendant
sanitary squad, now reduced to a single
horribly yellow member, and orders that the
man be placed in his bunk. Accompanied by
his sergeant he proceeds to inspect the tiers
and tiers of bunks. It is a stumble rather
than a march by. But that doesn't matter,
for the occupants are feeUng so sorry for
themselves that they have neither eye nor
inclination to criticize the steadiness of his
gait. The sight of so many of his men lying
under the weather gives him stimulus for
the moment. His condition improves enough
to allow him to act the good Samaritan

FEBRUARY 127

or (if you like) the persuasive nurse. He
bids his children buck up and go on deck
and drink in the fresh ozone-sodden air.
One or two six-foot-three babyish Shantung
giants he gently pats on the head, intending
to inspire comfort and courage. The giants
turn over on their stomachs and groan
abominably. Suddenly he has a fit of
giddiness and exits hurriedly deckwards ;
faint but fortitudinous, he gulps in the
reviving breeze, happy at heart that he is
still an infallible commanding officer.

IV

In the orderly room, which is on the port
side not far from the canteen, are a few sacks
of peanuts. They are kept there in reserve
should there be an unexpected run on this
commodity, the hold, where the bulk of the
stores are kept, only being open at a certain
hour of the morning. The coolies know of
this peanut reserve. A knobby, shapeless
sack, say they, can contain but one thing —
peanuts.

It is midnight and dark and gusty on deck.
A light to port flashes unsteadily on the
horizon. It is all the O.K. party will see of
Yokohama. It is the last land light they will
see for many a night. The Pacific is ahead ;
huge belts of grey skies and days of steady
wind. Clearing the coast of Japan, we alter
our course, turning northward to track the
Great North Circle across to Vancouver.

From the hold hatch emerges a coolie.
He is hatless, but has wrapped around
his shoulders his maroon waterproof. The

128

FEBRUARY 129

orderly officer for the night would not make
a mental note of this quite usual figure.
But follow this unit of F Company. He
shuffles and glides along the galley, his head
tucked down into his shoulder to shut out
the cold from his body. As by arrangement
with himself, he stops before the orderly room
and looks in through the half-opened door.
The native sentry within is fast asleep ; he
is Ijring on the floor with a strip of cocoa-nut
matting under him and his mouth wide open.
Unit of F Company is hungry ; not that he
went to bed hungry but that he had woke
up so. Shells of peanuts fairly littered the
floor of the 'tween decks. Peanuts appealed
to him irresistibly. He thought of neither
justification nor result, but glided straight to
his task of stealing.

It was only a handful after all ; and there
was already a slit as large as his fist in one of
the sacks. Why the native sentry, who in-
opportunely stirred from his sleep, wanted to
make such a row over a few nuts which he
could buy for two coppers any day in the
canteen, Heaven only knew. It was a small
thing. If he had attempted to get away
with a whole sack, then he could have under-

130 WITH THE CHINKS

stood his brother dragging him before the
foreign officer on duty. But — and this you'll
hardly believe — the matter was magnified
to such a degree that it became public ; public
disgrace being meted out to him by court
martial. For six hours unit of F Company
stood handcuffed to a winch. About his neck
was hung a notice which detailed his crime,
and warned his feUows against a similar
breach of discipline. For six hours he stood,
the image of shame, while his brothers
loitered about him reading with mingled fear
and amusement the brief statement of the
crime.

I WANT to introduce into this diary-narrative
— because it would not be complete without —
Julius East or Jule as we call him. Jule is in
command of C Company. He threw up a
good banking job in China to go home with
the coolies. No sooner arrived in camp than
he was shipped away with us — who had
waited close upon two moons for our move-
ment orders. Neither freak nor favouritism —
simply good luck. And we did not envy
him a jot. Indeed, we were glad to have him
with us. We placed him against the back-
ground of a long voyage, and found him not
wanting.

" I hope Jule goes with us," Clarison said
to me the day before we left camp. " He's
an amusing bird."

That's really as good a definition as one
can give of JuUus East. Saturate with youth
and then dry in a literary air, and the rest
of the portrait must rely upon his chronicled

acts.

131

132 WITH THE CHINKS

The second day out in the Pacific it came
to Jule that it would be interesting to know
what was passing in the minds of his coolies.
He approached the matter in a pure spirit of
learning ; he did not intend to write a book ;
should he be asked about the thing in family
or club circle, at home or in the East, he
wanted to be able to answer readily and with
originality. So, picking out the most intelli-
gent of the interpreters, he descended to the
'tween decks and closeted himself with his
two sergeants. After two hours' circumlo-
cutory cross-examination this was what he
found out. The names of the sergeants were
Tang Chi Chang and Sen Shin Lin. They
were aged 27 and 26 respectively. The
former was for three years a school teacher in
Hanking. He had a wife who was also a
school teacher. Together they earned (Mexi-
can) $55 a month. Chang was a Christian
and a graduate of Weishin University. In the
Autumn Festival holidays he had gone home
(near Tsingtau) where he heard of the C.L.C.
The idea of going abroad fastened on his mind.
The descent from a schoolmaster to a labourer
was steep. He did not mind the degradation
so long as he gained experience. He modestly

ill >'» IB^ '";j^

A rilRT Oi-" CAI.I. ON THE I X TK k M I N A lil. E JflUi;M-;V

INTOXICATED HV THE MnRNMNf; "I HEV SWUNG ALONG 'I HE CANADIAN l<i<

FEBRUARY 133

suggested that his superior intellectual train-
ing would sooner or later place him above his
fellows. He entered camp as a coolie ; he
was now a sergeant. He would go to France
as a sergeant. Who knew with what honours
might he be covered when the time came to
go home ? He knew that the world was
round ; also that there was a war in Europe.
He had not thought about the ship beyond
that it was wonderful. Neither reflection
nor anticipation was a rule of his life. And
such questions as concerned them belonged
to a category of literature on which he did
not feel qualified to speak.

Sen Shin Lin, who perspired freely in the
effort to express himself, his coal-black eyes
glancing timidly from the interpreter to Jule,
said that for the last six years he had served
in the Chinese Army, having gone with the
Governor of Chili on the expedition to
Yunnan — wherefore, it is impossible to say,
as civil wars in China are nearly as frequent
as divorce cases in America, though not half
so interesting to the pubhc at large. He
lived his life in the Army, but hearing of the
C.L.C. from a friend, thought it a better
thing, deserting his country's service without

134 WITH THE CHINKS

a second thought. He had no forward or
backward vision, living contentedly for the
day. Only he wanted to be assured of one
thing — that he was not being snaffled for the
British Army. On which point Jule satisfied
him by saying that he hadn't the beans to
become a Tommy in a hundred years. As
a matter of fact, Jule greatly admired Lin's
energy and physique ; but it was just his way
of reassuring.

Jule, not satisfied with what he had got out
of his two sergeants, chose at random one out
of the ranks. In came a six-foot-two, mag-
nificently built, open-mouthed hayseed, one
Lun Zun Chong, who hailed from the province
of Chili. Jule asked many straight questions,
but never a satisfactory answer did he receive.
The salient fact he gathered was that Chong
was not a farmer by avocation notwithstand-
ing that he lived on a farm and by a farm.
" In other words," Jule said to himself, " a
slacker, or, to be more polite, a sycophant."
Lun was vague as to how he got into the
C.L.C. " Through a friend," said the inter-
preter. He had accepted the whole thing
passively, just as a man accepts a cold and
blows his nose as a matter of course. One

FEBRUARY 135

inkling of thought he did manifest — a thought
concerning his parents. He understood that
because he was going away his relatives
would receive money. The conception of
separation allowance was far too complex
for him to master. His age and stature made
him the money-earning unit of the family ;
although he had never considered himself as
such.

Now, the moral to be drawn from Jule's
interview with three members of his com-
pany is that nothing passes in the mind of
a coolie, whether he be sergeant or plain
cooUe. Nothing, that is, of a philosophic
nature. As I concluded earlier in this
narrative, there are certain moments when
he is surprised by a vision of home ; cer-
tain moments when this or that stage of
this long journey is hung for him as a
picture in the uncrowded academy of his
mind, but he looks at it without amaze-
ment just as he looked on the more vivid
reality. He is absorbing, learning, being
changed all the time, but he hastens not one
of these processes by conscious assimilation.
Whilst experiences are ceaselessly pressing
upon him, his attitude towards existence is

136 WITH THE CHINKS

the attitude of a domesticated animal. And
a very fine one too.

Jule was disappointed over the result of
his research work. He expected whimsical
points of view, quaint definitions, intellectual
oddities. In some shape they were there ;
he still clung to the beUef they were get-at-
able.

" But not through an interpreter," he said.
" A Frenchman, ignorant of our language,
might as well attempt Wordsworth's trick
with the English peasant."

Jule looked glum in mess to-night. He
told Branch he had decided to learn Chinese.

VI

Our O.C, who is a portly and omnipresent
personage, inspecting, reviewing, criticizing,
compromising, and encouraging all day long
in holds, 'tween decks, galleys, forecastle and
wherenot, has a peculiar way with coolies.
A way, undoubtedly, successful. I suppose
that is why he is O.C. Of course he speaks
better Chinese than the coolies themselves.
But that is not the quality of his " way."
Branch also is a classic speaker ; but Branch's
manner is brittle. The O.C.'s is elastic. It
gives at the right moment. It saves him
from wielding the iron fist — a method which
in principle and practice is as repugnant to
the coolies as it is to the Allies.

For instance. Hurley, an Irishman, com-
manding H Company and Superintendent
of Police, is a thorough advocate of physical
persuasion. He believes in blaming the
wrong man ; and hitting him. Metaphori-
cally speaking, he cracks peanuts with a
steam hammer. He deals in punishments as

137

138 WITH THE CHINKS

Moses dealt in mercies. Granted that ex-
pectoration is a sin against a sanitary con-
dition of things, Hurley will magnify it into
one of the Deadly Seven. With the Adju-
tant's permission he has sent men to prison
(an electric-lit monkey-house hut situate in
the fo'c'sle 'tween decks) for less than a spit.
He has surprised gambling parties (a popular
social pastime in the holds), confiscated the
coppers in use and detailed the guilty gam-
blers to latrine fatigue — the severest allow-
able form of degradation.

The O.C., whilst recognizing the advan-
tages of being thus severe, has a discipline
system of his own. Its secret is humour.
He makes a coolie laugh at himself, which for
the coolie is a form of self -chastisement.
And most efficacious. For example, he will
point out that it is just as easy to expectorate
into the sea as on the deck. A spittle is
nothing once in the sea ; whereas on deck
it may prove the undignified fall of a com-
pany commander ; and has, in any case, to
be removed by the expectorant. Whereupon
the coolie will laugh, go down on his knees
and wipe up the spittle — ^probably with a
neck-towel. Equally entertaining instances

FEBRUARY 139

could be multiplied. But just to show how
a discipline system, humane or otherwise,
may be nonplussed, I will give an experience
of Jule's.

It is ten o'clock one roughish morning in
mid-Pacific. Foregathered in the orderly
room are the O.C, the Adjutant, the orderly
officer for the day, and a liverish interpreter.
They are awaiting the arrival of the chief
mate, in whose company the above distin-
guished gentlemen make a daily tour of
inspection. This is a function carried out
with all the solemnity befitting its importance.
Its object is to inspect the labours of a seasick
sanitary squad and to see that the stringers
and uprights supporting coolies' bunks have
not unduly warped during the night. In a
blow the other night these wooden structures
bulged and swayed with what might have
been fatal results had not a corporal who
found himself ignominiously lying on top of
a cooHe, having fallen through from the bunk
above, reported the matter to his company
commander. The latter, a man of action
and not being sure of the rites of burial-at-
sea, descended to the hold and, after a hasty
inspection, condemned as dangerous no less

140 WITH THE CHINKS

than two hundred bunks, and made the
occupants sleep on the floor. Not that the
floor was a whit less comfortable, but that,
being the floor of a lower hold, it exposed
the tenants to an erratic overhead fire
(through a lattice ceiling) of peanut shells,
orange peel, rice in various stages of cooking,
etc.

But to return to the daily inspection. The
party, now complete, moves off, headed by
the O.C., who lights a large cheroot as much
from habit (whenever a C.L.C. O.C. officiates
outside France he always smokes) as to show
4200 coolies that whereas smoking is strictly
prohibited in the holds and 'tween decks the
O.C. is a privileged person. It may be
secretly divulged that as many of the com-
pany commanders who can, do smoke.
Since we left Nagasaki smoking has not been
popular. In any case, company commanders
do not smoke while the O.C. is on tour of
inspection, though they have been known to
hold the hot end of a cheroot under the palm
of the hand. The whiff of the O.C.'s cheroot
is well known in Hold A, whither the party
has descended, and there is significant move-
ment in a knot of seasick coolies, some

FEBRUARY 141

escaping up the hatch, some wrapping their
heads in their blankets, until the O.C. and
the cloud he obscures himself in, are well
past. In the comparative darkness of Hold B,
which is under Hold A, stands Jule earnestly
exhorting his sanitary squad to make cleanli-
ness more clean and then to sweep up again.

"Not so dusty," said the O.C. as he
flashed an electric torch on a floor which
might have been mistaken for the top of a
billiard-table just before the felt is laid on.

Jule didn't think so either ; and he was
particularly proud of the absence of spitting,
which he had practically abolished through
rigorous discipline. Around stand a score of
coolies, awed by the almost ambassadorial
dignity of the visitors. The sanitary squad
lean on their brooms ; the police tuck their
truncheons under the arm. Gangers of all
classes stand at attention. It is an impres-
sive moment. The O.C. now turns to the
chief mate and asks his opinion on the
matter. That able and charming seaman,
undesirous of venturing an opinion lightly
in such weighty circumstances, hesitates,
clears his throat, and says :

" Ay, not so dusty." Upon which, as if

142 WITH THE CHINKS

to prove to all present that despite this
public utterance he is still quite at his ease,
clears his throat raucously and — ^whether or
not in a lapse of thought it is impossible to
say — expectorates on Jule's incomparable
floor.

Coolies, gangers, police, sanitary squad look
fearfully from the expectorant to Jule. Many
tremble for the fate of the chief mate at the
hands of their company commander. But,
though Jule glares, nothing happens. So
they begin to see the joke and laugh, just as
hayseeds of all countries do, venting loud
open-air guffaws. He cannot make himself
heard to call them to attention. The work of
a week is gone to the dickens.

VII

Joe, the ship's carpenter, was busy one
morning erecting and strengthening bunks
that had fallen in the night. Holds I and J
had suffered most. The matter was brought
to the attention of the chief mate by Mam-
mon, an American, one of our conducting
officers. It may be explained that a con-
ducting officer is a man — usually an
American — who does not intend to stay with
us in France. His connection with the
C.L.C. ceases when he lands his company
there. He is looked upon as a passing show.
By some as an intruder. He wields a little
brief authority — and disappears. He has
been likened to a bus-driver. His interest
in the cooUes ceasing with the end of the
journey, it is difficult, not to say impossible,
for him to cultivate the paternity attitude
which distinguishes the genuine C.L.C. officer.
He may be an excellent ofl&cer, as Mammon
is ; but he is not a father. Nor, conscientious
as he may be, do the coolies become children

143

144 WITH THE CHINKS

to him. They are so many passengers who
must be conveyed safely from a point in the
Eastern Hemisphere to a point in the Western.
As a rule he does not study their language or
their ways. What is passing in their minds is
nothing to him. But for all that he is a care-
ful driver, a meticulous disciphnarian.

Imagine, therefore. Mammon making a
verbal report to the chief mate.

" It's a wonder my company weren't killed
in their sleep last night. Can't you fix these
berths so the rolling don't make no differ-
ence ? "

The chief mate nods and says he'll see what
can be done. Two whistles bring the quarter-
master ; and the quartermaster, duly in-
structed, brings Joe. Joe, duly instructed,
descends to Holds I and J. En route he
ventures to Mammon :

" I reckon an official report ought to be
made about this thing, I could have made
a better job of it myself."

Joe is, of course, ship's carpenter and not a
bed builder for the C.L.C. Arrived in Hold I
Joe is the centre of lively attention. He
carries a saw under one arm, a plumber
under the other, and a couple of planks in

FEBRUARY 145

each hand. He wears the customary blue-
black overalls and shaggy mud-guard mous-
tache. Behind him follows his assistant, a
miserable knock-kneed Cantonese. The
coolies have never before seen anyone like
Joe. They cannot place him. He is too
shabby and workaday-looking to be a com-
pany commander ; too skilful with his saw
(as they soon see) to be a foreigner. So
they ingeniously conclude he is a Chinaman
in disguise. The fact that his lingo does not
seem to be immediately intelHgible to Mam-
mon, their CO., confirms them in this
opinion. Joe is saying, with a wink :

" First thing a mechanician does is to light
'is pipe."

This operation is admiringly followed by
gangers of all classes. The circle widens
around Joe as his pipe gets under way. A
lance-corporal, overcome by direct fire, dives
for the deck. Next, the carpenter, addressing
his assistant as Flanagan, instructs the
latter to climb up into the top tier of bunks
and investigate the trouble.

" Walkee too much," presently cries Flan-
agan ; which is pidgin-English for : " The
supports have given considerably."

146 WITH THE CHINKS

" 'Ammer them back," Joe decides.

But the supports are bearing the weight
of an odd thirty human bodies. (The vast
majority of coolies are bed-ridden on board.)
To which fact Flanagan discreetly draws
attention. Joe concurs.

" Get the out of it," he shouts to two

recumbent sections of I Company, ignoring or
else being ignorant of the truism that large
bodies of men are most easily handled in a
polite and orderly manner— Shantung farmers
not excepted. Or, as a third possibility, Joe's
injunction may have been a subtle but poig-
nant allusion to the non-intimacy of con-
ducting officers with their companies. Which-
ever, Joe supports his order by brandishing
his saw before the face of a slumbering
coolie. Sections 12 and 13 of I Company,
fearing for the life of a comrade, tumble
pell-mell out of their bunks, trailing water-
proofs, knapsacks, water-bottles, and dis-
hevelled blankets behind them.

A parenthesis is necessary here to state
that whenever and wherever cooUes turn or
are turned out, they do so in full marching
order. This is one of the closest relations
they bear to the men in the trenches. The

FEBRUARY 147

reason is not preparedness for action, but
a precaution against exchange of equipment.
That is, a coolie is never satisfied with one
of everything that he should have. If he
can appropriate an extra water-bottle he
will, and he will manage successfully to con-
ceal the spare one on his person when on
parade. Two blankets are easily made to
look like one ; two caps, two waterproofs
are easily worn. On the principle that two
wrongs make a right, a coolie is no sooner
stolen from than he himself steals. Coolies'
equipment is in constant circulation. A
single waterproof may keep thirty backs dry
in as many rainy days. Against this the
outfitting department in China have thought-
fully provided by making all equipments of
a standard size.

To Joe the cooUes are theoretically as the
dust under his feet. But the fact that the
"yellow 'eathens are 'elping out in France"
somewhat redeems them in his sight, and he
treats them with jovial respect.

" 'E's a smart Alec," he says to Mammon
as a coolie rests a board on the edge of a
bunk for Joe to stand on and hammer at the
support. And, between spurts of hammering.

148 WITH THE CHINKS

the carpenter carries on a conversation with
his admiring audience in a lingo, which,
though quite unintelligible to Mammon, is
exquisitely humorous to them.

No one who knows the coolie will deny him
a sense of humour. It enables him to over-
ride with uncanny cheerfulness the petty
annoyances of life. Even he sees fun in being
cussed by Joe and glared at by Flanagan.
Mammon stands by uninterested.

VIII

JuLE paraded his lance-corporals for life-belt
drill. The life-belts on board are not of the
conventional rubber-tyre type, but' canvas-
covered slabs of cork. They have been
employed as pillows by aU ranks. The
strings, which attach the belts to the body,
being considered an unnecessary adjunct to
a pillow, have been removed and used for
various purposes — sock - suspenders and
trouser-binders, the chief. The belts them-
selves have given considerable trouble. Not
only is there great diversity of opinion in
regard to how they should be worn, but many,
owing to their stringlessness, are not wear-
able at all. An inspection of the same proved
to Jule that the Chinese are capable of eating
cork, the canvas having been slit and chunks
nibbled out of more than one belt. It is
possible they were taken for biscuits of a
foreign and particularly filling kind.

The Chinese are inventive as well as
adaptive. For example, novel use is made of

149

150 WITH THE CHINKS

the boiling water which bubbles from the
cylinder boxes of the winches. It is drunk,
the admixture of lubricating oil, unavoid-
able when water is drawn from so ready a
fount, being found to give the drink a piquant
flavour. More naturally and, we should say,
less harmfully, the scupper hydrants, which
are used to scour the deck, are tapped and
sea-water drawn to wash the face, tin plates
and cups, and garments indiscriminately.
It is noticed, however, and reported despair-
ingly by the engineer members of the Can-
tonese crew that cocks, nuts, washers, taps,
and other parts detachable from said hydrants
mysteriously disappear. A search in the
holds has more than once revealed the miss-
ing accessories fastidiously wrapped in paper
and tucked away in the crowded corner
of some cooUe's kit-bag. It is speculative
whether the Chinese antecede the Americans
in their passion for memorial curios.

Other parts of the ship are put to ingenious
use. Thus, the breakwater on the fo'c'sle
deck serves successfully to camouflage gam-
bling parties. Gambling on board (dicing,
coin-tossing and an Asiatic card game akin
to a mild form of poker) is strictly forbidden ;

FEBRUARY 151

because gambling so often leads to physical
argument, suppression of which would in-
ordinately engage the attention of the orderly
officer on duty.

The entrance to the officers' galley is em-
ployed as a radiator to revive heat in the
bone-chilled coolie as well as serving to whet
his appetite with whiffs of foreign ' chow ' a-
cooking.

Not an integral part of a ship but usually
found on board, the tin basin (which a coolie
finds in his kit-bag) is put to a multitude of
uses, among which the most practical are :
a receptacle to save the sanitary squad un-
necessary work ; a receptacle in which to
wash the body and socks ; a receptacle in
which to carry away from the galley a
quantity over and above his due portion of
rice ; a drum.

IX

The secret of maintaining peace and satis-
faction among some 4000 coolies on a long
trans-Pacific voyage is to endow for them
each day with interest. On rough days this
necessity is annulled. To-day, being fine
and fairly calm, it was deemed advisable to
spring a surprise. This took the shape of a
sale of musical instruments. A prodigious
quantity of two-stringed fiddles, flutes, and
mandolins were unearthed from the hold by
the quartermaster and sold, at something just
above cost, to a prodigious number of instru-
mentalists. It astounded Jule, in this con-
nexion, that there were no less than thirty
fiddlers in his company. Those skilful with
the reed abounded in Branch's company.
The mandolins did not meet with equal
demand, not only because that instrument
is comparatively rare in China, but because
they went at double the price of a fiddle.
The price of a fiddle was sixty coppers ; the
price of a flute was forty coppers. This is a

152

FEBRUARY 153

gigantic sum for any individual coolie to
spend on an article which does not come
under the head of canteen. So it was found
expedient, by more than one fair-minded
officer, to exact from each and every coolie
the sum of two coppers against the cost of
the battalion's instruments. A description
of these noise-pro vokers may be of interest.

The fiddle looks like an enormous clay pipe,
with a very thin stem and a very fat bowl.
The aperture of the latter is bridged and
two strings are extended from the bridge to
a cross-beam on the top of the stem. When
played the instrument is held bowl down-
wards on the knee ; and if feelingly played
is capable of producing extreme melancholia
and nostalgia in the coolie.

The flute is neither more nor less than a
thin bamboo pole, about a yard long, with
holes punched at regular intervals. Deft
piping excites the coolie to dance or to the
deep enjoyment of a "Pride of China"
cigarette.

The mandolin is a hollow bread board, to
which is attached a fantastically - shaped
neck, from the top of which strings sag, like
wires between telegraph poles, to the middle

154 WITH THE CHINKS

of the board. As previously stated, this is
not a popular instrument. It is enjoyed by
the select — in secret, as a rule.

Soon after noon (when the sale began) to
well past midnight the holds and 'tween decks
vibrated with the tuning-up efforts of coolie
musicians. It reminded Jule (who has been
an exile in China for some years) of nothing so
much as the chaos of sound produced by a
symphony orchestra just previous to the
execution of the first movement of, say,
Beethoven's Ninth.

The formation of a picked band of instru-
mentalists is suggested in mess. If Tommies
march to the beat of fife and drum, why not
coolies to the shriek of fiddle and flute ?

X

Meridian day is notable chiefly because it is
not a day at all. It is an undatable spell
of twenty-four hours which we live through
in order that we may not be a day ahead of
the Gregorian Calendar when we arrive in
Canada. The Paymaster does not make
allowances for this phenomenon of time. For
once we have given our services free to the
country.

It is worth chronicling here that ever since
we began to go east and steal night marches on
time, the mess-room clock has raced, gaining
on our watches from nineteen to forty minutes
a day. The officers have corrected their
time-pieces at midday, mutely accepting
this mystery. The matter has, however,
caused no little astonishment among watch-
owning coolies, who ask for an explanation.
Needless to say, they do not get one, inas-
much as the Captain, who is the only man
perfectly clear on the matter, does not speak
Chinese.

156 WITH THE CHINKS

It would be as well if this time-mystery
could be solved once and for all, as it aUows
N.C.O.'s to parade their men for morning
drill legitimately late.

XI

Our medico states that you can knock the
stuffing but not the superstition out of a
coohe. Before the days of Rockefeller-
endowed medical colleges it was a common
belief in China (still current apparently
among Shantung farmers) that diseases were
evil winds within the body. Let the wind
escape and the patient was cured. Nothing
could be easier.

So thought Li Pao Hsiang (coolie, A Com-
pany) as he sat in Bunk 45, Hold B, making
pinpricks at equal distances in the forehead
of his prostrate lance-corporal. He had made
rather a mess of things, as our Blue Funnel
freighter was, at the time, making a fuss over
a heavy beam sea. A dip to port or starboard
would cause Li Pao Hsiang to puncture his
patient's face deeper than he intended. The
result was a somewhat gruesome sight for our
medico, who (excellent temperament ! ) was
visiting rounds on behalf of an officer tem-

157

158 WITH THE CHINKS

porarily incapacitated by the aforesaid heavy
beam sea.

Unless a medico is keen on the still small
hours of the night, keen on having the twenty-
four hours artificially divided into five, seven,
and twelve-hour watches, he does not dis-
charge the shipboard duties of an orderly
officer. Without keeping coolies in order he
is sufficiently occupied keeping them in
health. Four-fifths of his time is devoted to
convincing seasick coolies that they are not
in danger of death. Many are afflicted with
imaginary maladies. For example, a great
song is made over a swollen arm, as the result
of scratching vaccination scabs. Observation
is daily demanded on this score. Sick leave
is requested for the same — but never given.

Occasionally our medico has a surgical job
to perform. In a fit of absent-mindedness a
coolie may elect to fall four stories of bunks
and land more or less heavily on a steel-plate
floor. Anyone but a coolie would, of course,
be instantly killed. That man of " ardours
and endurances " suffers nothing more than
the fracture of some insignificant bone. But
it may be noted (perhaps to his credit) that
for the setting of this bone he will have to be

FEBRUARY 159

dragged to hospital. Not that he is a coward,
but that maladies which really merit atten-
tion he would himself nurse in secret. He
will cry like an infant over a cut. If he has
received a compound fracture of some limb
he will inform nobody and slink to the seclu-
sion of his own bed.

As Li Pao Hsiang's patient had nothing
more serious than a headache he was rousing
the world over it, and when our medico enters
on the scene you may picture half a company
of coolies concerned in his cure. A Chinese
loves publicity of a mild nature, and you may
be sure Li was making the most of the occasion.

" Letting the evil winds escape," he said
in reply to our medico's inquiry in regard
to the dubious operation. " One must be
very careful," the quack explained, " where
the escape-holes are made. The wind is con-
tained in certain pockets. One must not
prick the brain."

Lucky for Li, our medico is possessed not
only of a sense of humour, but of an excellent
knowledge of the Chinese. Wherefore the
quack went unpunished but not upbraided.
And his patient was carried off and a dose of
prosaic fruit salts administered to him.

XII

Our long Pacific voyage draws to a close.
In two days we are due at a Canadian port.
Already we prepare for disembarkation.

The arts of shaving and hair-cutting are
being practised daily and continually in the
holds. Each company chooses its own
barbers, a class of men which abounds in the
battalion. Given the necessary razors and
clippers, a company proceeds to elect a score
of barbers. On an average five are appointed
to cut the hair and fifteen to shave. The
appointments are carefully made, for not
merely the good looks but the lives of the
rank-and-file are entrusted to the chosen
ones. Appointments of this kind are seldom
if ever revoked. A coolie places his fate unre-
servedly in the hands of the elected barber.
Even with the ship switchbacking up and
down gigantic Pacific swells he doesn't fear
to have his head and beard shaved. Chairs
being unknown outside the officers' mess,
operator and victim squat down facing one

i6o '

FEBRUARY i6i

another, the former holding the latter's head
firmly between his knees as he scythes down
the black stiff upright crop of two months'
growth. The shave is very close, leaving the
head bald and smooth as an ostrich's egg.

A quorum of officers agree that this process
vastly improves the looks of a coolie, not-
withstanding that some, Hke Jule, are of the
opinion that a coolie, in his shaven state,
distressingly resembles a Hun. The quarter-
master, who is genuinely attached to the
Chinese as a people, waxed wroth over What
he called " this odious comparison."

" Not the sHghtest resemblance," he cried.
" Have you ever seen a Chinese with any-
thing hke a square head ? Square-headedness
is the mark of the beast, not a bald pate ! "

Socks and other washable garments are be-
ing feverishly scoured. Whatever its fore-
runners have done, the O.K. party is deter-
mined to present a clean, neat, soldier-like
appearance to Canada. Under British officer-
ship, the Chinese are marching, clean and
straight and strong, to their job of work in
France.

To the individual labourer it is, of course,
something more than active (though non-

i62 WITH THE CHINKS

combative) participation in the war. It is a
going forth into the world, a pilgrimage to
most distant places. It is travel through
and sojourn in the lands of the White Man.

PART III

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY

Canada was on the lips of many coolies
before we landed. It meant to them
(so their officers had told them) the land
of the White Man, a land which flowed
with milk and honey, where no poverty
was, no disobedience, and therefore no
punishment ; which few of them had seen
and which they were highly privileged in
seeing. Certainly from the decks, whither
the unaccustomed calmness had attracted
them, it appeared a land of promise. Snow-
capped mountains on one side of a strait
whose waters glistened in the morning sun,
waters dotted with derelict logs on which
sea-gulls perched foolishly at attention ; on
the other, richly-wooded hills which trailed
their blue and emerald skirts in the sea.
Hills of the Western world. Here and there
a mist, individual, rising probably from some
frog-haunted marsh. Those who had stuck
doggedly in their dingy beds the voyage long,

i6s

i66 WITH THE CHINKS

came up on deck to be flooded in sunshine
and to scent the strong perfume of the
Douglas pine. It was new to them and
acceptable. Acceptable, I say, because their
natures did not allow them to go out and
meet the thing at sight. Stolidly, faintly
glowing with excitement, they awaited the
evening. The chief thing was, it was not
China. Some inquired if it were England ;
if they were at their journey's end. They did
not know any better. How should they ?
Even if it had been explained, they would
not have understood. Inter-continental dis-
tances were inconceivable. The earth in her
immensity was ungraspable.

So, when these simple farmers, carpenters,
brickmakers, dressers, weavers, brass-smiths,
blacksmiths, bakers, bricklayers, ex-soldiers
and stonemasons landed in Canada in the
same good order wherewith they had em-
barked in their native land, they took thought
not for the country they were in, but when
they would get their next meal. If ever men
marched on their stomachs, it was the rank
and file of the C.L.C.

They were shortly to feel in novel circum-
stances. Hitherto rations had been cooked

ITCHING CAiMF' IN CANADA

THE PKIDE OF CLEAN TENT LINES

MARCH. APRIL AND MAY 167

for them. Now they were to forage for them-
selves. They were in camp — a camp run on
military lines ; which necessitated, as soon
as might be, the appointment of company
cooks. This was a simple matter, for every
coolie is a potential cook. But, as company
officers were later to learn, not every cook
makes a company cook. For example, a
carpenter might know how to boil rice, but
probably only an ex-soldier would know how
to keep order in the kitchen. The latter
function, in the eyes of a company com-
mander, is more important than the former.
This, by the way. The thing on arrival in
camp was to make a start.

So, out of an odd four thousand volunteers,
sixty were chosen. In four hectic hours,
during which company commanders taught
their men the art of stoking boiler-fires (the
rice being boiled in huge caldrons), the first
meal was ready. It was eaten under canvas,
fifteen men being quartered in a tent. Men
had only to stick their heads out of the tent
to see the arbutus with its beautiful flesh-
tinted bark, to see pine-clad hills, the Pacific
blue as the very sky, the Rockies trailing
their snowy ridges into the distance.

II

This was the beginning of ten weeks in
Canada. One day was much like another.
Nothing extraordinary ever happened. Life
was simple and sunny. If they went out of
camp, it was to march along wonderful new-
world roads. If they had any work to do, it
was to split wood and carry it to the kitchens.
Their anxious breaking-in days were over.
They saw little of their officers. To-morrow
was always the day of departure and to-
morrow always came and they were still in
camp. They didn't worry. Indeed, why
should they ? Their lives were comfortably
framed. A single night and they were used
to sleep under canvas. Two days and they
had learnt how to keep their camp lines
clean. They had enough to eat. Daily a
lorry thundered into camp and brought them
rice ; the ration boat daily made port from
some Harbour of Plenty and brought them
whole sides of beef and sacks of vegetables.

1 68

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 169

They cooked for themselves and were satis-
fied.

A few new people came into their lives.
The colonel, for one. Of whom, as affecting
them, more is written below. Also they
came into touch with soldiers who unarmed
stood at the entrances to camp or sat on the
rocks in front of the kitchen and watched
them go about their business. They didn't
understand who these men were or what they
were about. The white soldiers neither
helped nor hindered them. They seemed to
be as negative a part of camp as the boundary
fences. They found they could joke with
them without reproof ; examine their uni-
forms ; hold their hands and chatter ; play
ball with them. So that when the Canadian
sentries wanted something done, they were
simply laughed at or had pebbles playfully
thrown at them. Altogether the white
soldiers were tame jolly chaps. Obviously
they were there not to be obeyed but for a
jest.

Sometimes parties of foreigners would visit
the camp lines and observe them in their
tents. They hked to be a centre of interest.
They liked to have their wristlets examined ;

170 WITH THE CHINKS

to see foreigners pointing at them as though
they were remarkable ; to reveal the contents
of their kit-bags for curious observation.
On such occasions the musicians, tumblers
and jugglers among them would be picked
out and made to perform. To a tea-drinking
audience they would scrape their fiddles and
screech their native songs ; do cart-wheels
and stand on their heads ; swallow stones
and pierce their tongues with a meat skewer.
The reward for which would be applause
and a cigarette or two for each performer.
It was better than drilling and quite as
amusing as doing nothing at all.

After a week in camp a ripple of excite-
ment was caused by the arrival of a battalion
of brothers. It cheered them to see so many
of their kind engaged in the same adventure.
They were disappointed when the new batta-
lion moved out of sight and camped on a
neighbouring hill. They had hoped to get
news of this and that village in Shantung.
Nine weeks later, however, both battalions
were to continue the Interminable Journey
on the same transport. Wherefore, for
identification purposes, our men called them-
selves West of the Mountain men, alluding

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 171

to the newly arrived as East of the Moun-
tain men.

A friendly and fruitful rivalry sprang up
between the two battalions. They vied with
one another in keeping their camp lines
clean. The police washed their khaki uni-
forms until they were white. The sergeants
drilled their men after official parade. For
all that they saw little of one another for,
shortly after their arrival, an epidemic of
mumps spread among East of the Moun-
tain men and they were not allowed to come
in contact with their rivals.

Shortly after this a disaster (it can be
called nothing less) overtook "O.K." party.
It was split in two. Transport facilities
became available for five companies which
were trained across the continent. The
conducting officers and Branch went with
this lot. Jule istayed behind and was ap-
pointed adjutant of the remnant of the
party. Behold that enthusiastic officer bid-
ding sorrowful adieu to his company. He
was attached to his men ; he even loved
them. He loved them because they were
like children in their simplicity ; because
they did their best nine times out of ten ;

172 WITH THE CHINKS

because they always met him with a smile.
The tears came into his eyes as, one bright
March morning, they trudged out of camp,
with their packs on their backs, happy as
schoolboys setting out on a holiday. They
saluted him as they passed, some crying out
a word of salutation ; others imitating the
way he would give a command. And Jule
stood wondering when he would see his
Christian sergeant again and what would be
his lot in France ; and for the moment he
threw his mind forward and pictured the
day when all these magnificent men would
return to China and import a new spirit,
which would quicken and strengthen them
for the part they were to play in the re-
building of the world after the war.

Ill

They knew him not as the Colonel but as
the king. He was the most impressive
person they had ever seen. He did not often
come among them. The rarity of his pres-
ence made him the more impressive. When
he came it was not on foot but mounted on
a spirited horse. Up and down their camp
lines he would canter, seated boldly upright
in his saddle. A kingly figure. Or, return-
ing from a cross-country ride, he would
gallop across the parade ground, raising a
cloud of dust, regally regardless of them.
After all, of what account were they to be
noticed ? Even company commanders these
days didn't have much to do with them. If
they had a " strafe " it was with their ser-
geants and corporals. Did these influentials
not satisfy them they would carry their case
to the interpreter who would settle the
matter for them with their commander.
They imagined that if the latter found it
impossible to decide upon the point, the

173

174 WITH THE CHINKS

king would decide for them. But, above all,
he would not be needlessly troubled. The
affair, duly docketed, might well be pigeon-
holed for days, awaiting supreme settle-
ment.

He was too royal to speak to them^but
right royally he acknowledged their salutes.
And suck a salute he gave. No company
commander saluted so smartly. There was
something gracious about him ; he held
aloof ; yet there was something intimate in
the way he smiled when saluting. He did
not come near enough to be recognized with
love. He had not journeyed and suffered
(privation) with them as had their company
commander. They knew nothing of him
save that he looked jolly on horseback and
fit to be the king he was. Yet they were
endeared to him, some through respect and
some through fear. Somehow they felt that
he was responsible for their lives ; that he
would take care of them and see that the
ration boat turned up regularly ; that he
would check their family allotments.

It interested them to know that there was
some one greater in the world than a com-
pany commander. The O.C. " O.K." party

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 175

was in charge. That they knew by the
whirlwind manner in which he occasionally
descended upon camp and caused drastic
changes. And, to be sure, he was now more
deeply feared because he so seldom came
among them. Notwithstanding, he appeared
to be on quite intimate terms with the
company commanders ; almost " one of
them." Whereas the Colonel rode into camp
quite alone ; sometimes, however, accom-
panied by his adjutant whom they took to
be his equerry. And, if he stopped to talk
with company commanders, the latter would
stand rigidly at attention, just as they them-
selves had been taught to stand when on
parade. Altogether he was somebody very
splendid and exceptional.

As for the Colonel, he did not at first
relish the idea of commanding a coohe
camp. It didn't sound inviting. But in
time he learnt — as he now taught others to
do — to weave a new web of ideas around the
word "coolie." Instead of recoiling from
contact with them, he grew to like them and
then to nurture a fondness for them. They
were such jolly peaceable fellows. Tliey
responded with obedience to fair and square

176 WITH THE CHINKS

treatment. They were as simple as children
and as lovable in their artlessness. Like
children they would go desperately far if
one gave them rein enough. But one didn't.
He ran his camp strictly. He gathered
notions from company commanders in regard
to " running the coolies " and added his
own. Pretty soon he began to see that the
common conception of a coolie was mythical.
The coolie had no more treachery, no more
beastliness, no more mental sterility in him
than the peasant of Europe. In many ways
he was a better fellow. His good temper and
good humour were priceless. Besides, he
could work like the devil if put to it.

Plunging a little deeper into the question
the Colonel perceived that the Oriental was
almost an ideal man to have in camp.
Especially if he had to be confined to camp
over a long period. Unlike the white soldier,
he did not fret for the world. Cinemas,
gaily -lit streets, shop windows, wine and
women were nothing to him because they
only came obliquely into his vision. He
was content with his very simple life. He
was content so long as he was decently
fed.

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 177

It amused the Colonel to watch the coolies
in their off-duty moments. How they sat on
the rocks, still as statues, gazing out to sea ;
how they lay in their tents bowing pensively
on their native fiddles ; how others, of a
more industrious spirit, pencilled out dragon
and temple and fantastically bordered pat-
terns on the ground ; how others would sit
under trees, like old women, patiently stitch-
ing up a torn tunic ; how others would
wander about idly, welcoming him with a
smile or with an awkward salute as he
passed by.

They showed him, too, that they could
work. They pleased him in little ways,
though to be sure, they never set out to
please him. He saw that there was good
stuff in them. His fondness for them grew
out of not merely the way in which they kept
their camp lines but their likeness to chil-
dren. He liked to jump on his horse of a
morning and canter by their ranks. A sea
of bronzed faces would upturn and smile
at him as he rode by. They would murmur
to one another but, notwithstanding he knew
nothing of Chinese, he was sure there was no
malice in their murmur. If he spent the

178 WITH THE CHINKS

day without this greeting he felt there was
something missing.

He had no idea that he was a king to them,
but he often saw in them a race of Uttle
kings.

IV

One April day Spring rushed into being.
The wind of Winter died down. There was
still a breath of coldness on the air, but it
came (as it came the year round) from
eternal snows not so distant. We found the
way of our route-marches in the shadow of
the leaves. The scent of the Douglas pine
hung drowsy in the air. The arbutus spread
her naked arms over the roadside. The bay
and the open sea beyond were never so calm
and so blue.

It was too inviting not to go out and
march. It was too beautiful not to show the
coolies. So off we went, soon after roll-call.
They were as keen to go, these coolies, as
their ofl&cers. They showed their delight by
a filood-tide of smiles. They would have
leapt, could they have done so and kept in
step. As it was, they chattered merrily and
were promptly called to order by their
corporals.

Intoxicated by the morning they swung
179

i8o WITH THE CHINKS

along the Canadian road. They had never
seen such foliage in their lives ; never so
many trees together ; never such a clear sky
and blue sea. Subconsciously they com-
pared this distinct and colour-shot radiance
with the monotone greys and browns of
their native land. The light green of the
maples and wild plum and cherry trees
looked beautiful against the dark green of
the firs and spruces. The road was bordered
with wild sunflowers and bluebells. Wheat
and oats, shooting their delicate blades
through the dark earth, they mistook for
rice. They could not understand how these
rich clearings yielded as they did, for they
never saw men and women working in the
fields. Yet there must be people, they
thought. And if there were people why had
they left untouched these riches of the
forest ? There were trees in glorious abun-
dance, but no one to cut them down. Alto-
gether it seemed a neglected land. The
few people they did see rushed past them in
motor-cars ; or walked up and down dale as
though they had nothing to do.

Cows, with their udders full to over-
flowing, tore at the roadside grass. Now and

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY i8i

again a chicken would shelter her squeaking
brood from the feet of so many men. Dogs
barked at the approach of the grey masses.

It was all very queer and jolly. It was
Canada. And that had to explain all.

About three miles from camp is a broad
beach, shaped like a horse-shoe, whereon
every incoming tide deposits a quantity of
drift-wood ; mostly great pine logs which,
in tow towards some lumber-miU, break away
and become derelict to be washed up on
some unfrequented shore. This beach pro-
vided our fire-wood. Daily a company of
coolies marched thither and brought back
enough fuel for the day. That was one of
their few jobs in camp. No provision for
labour was made in Canada. Advantage was
not taken of thousands of willing hands to
improve the roads, to clear the land and to
farm. The coolies could have done so much
during this long wait for transportation.
But the pros and cons of the question are by
the way. Enough that labour was unthink-
able that spring morning we marched to the
beach.

The tide was well out. The company
formed up on a broad expanse of greyish

i82 WITH THE CHINKS

golden sand. The sea took light from the
sun and threw it back in starry blue. The
warm day suggested a swim to the officer in
command. He did not indulge the idea for
himself but thought of the coolies. A plunge
would do them good. So, through the
interpreter, he called for volunteer swimmers.
There was a moment's hesitation as they
stood at grips with the idea and then the
delight of it was too much for them. They
laughed like children and fell to slipping off
their suits. The youngsters were ready first,
calling on dignified old farmers of fifty and
sixty to hurry up. Nude as mermen they
raced over the sand and entered the water
with splash and cry. There was beauty in
their shining bodies. The splendour of their
physique was suddenly shown. Hundreds
of figures now moved towards the sea. Some
ran, some danced. It was speed and frolic
that went with youth. Others, not so head-
strong, sat down and clasped their knees,
observing how their fellows took the water.
A few elders, not overfond of action, sat
apart on pine logs and enjoyed the scene.

It was a great day for them ; and it was a
great day for us. We who had so often com-

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 183

pared the coolies to children now quite un-
mistakably saw that they were children.
They had no fooUsh dignity of men. They
lost themselves in the moment's joy. They
lived for that sunlit hour. And, like children,
they weren't afraid of giving themselves
away ; they had no false reticence, no false
notions of nudity. And, that spring morn-
ing, they seemed to inherit the earth.

When a coolie has been in camp ten days
and no rumour reaches him that he is likely
soon to be bundled out and to begin a new
stage of the Interminable Journey, he sees it
is necessary to kill time. An addition or two
to his kit-bag may occur to him. Therefore
he steals — a pair of socks, a cap, a towel
from his brother's equipment. It is easily
done ; and no one is the wiser. His stealing
has nothing to do with theft. He takes on
the principle that if he doesn't take some
one will take from him. Possibly he is found
out and punished. That does not change his
point of view. He is just unlucky. He is a
unit of the defaulters' squad for a week.
That is one way of killing time.

Another way, and a wiser one, is to set to
work and make things for himself. Materials
are to hand. In the wire fence that sur-
rounds the camp he sees not the means of
enclosure, but the material for making a
buckle for his grey cloth belt. Three feet of

184

MARCH, APRIL AND MAY 185

wire is not missed. It is no business of his
if half the company follow his example. In
a few days the fence sags and gapes. There
is trouble ahead. The punishment, if any,
is widely shared. It is surely worth while.

Possibly his pantaloons have not stood
the test of time and of continual use. He
works in them, he sleeps in them ; they
become a part of him. It is time to think of
mending when the seams begin to go. He
borrows a needle from some officer's orderly.
But the latter won't give him thread. The
ingenious coolie is not long in overcoming
this difficulty. The trousers of his winter
suit are padded with cotton wool. He opens
the seams thereof, extracts a ball of cotton
wool and spins the same in a wooden jenny
of his own device. It is a lengthy process.
But the thing is pour passer le temps.

His native climate is dry from January to
December. He suffers a little from the
dampness of a Canadian spring. It may be
he catches a cold. A belly belt suggests
itself to him both as a prevention and a cure.
A strip of good strong canvas will admirably
suit the purpose. He doesn't cut a 3"x3^
strip out of his own tent because he thinks

i86 WITH THE CHINKS

the deed would thus be less easily traced to
him. He operates on the next tent because
a piece out of his own would let in an
abominable draught at night. And, of course,
he is quite right.

He now turns his hand to a quite innocent
pastime. He unweaves the coco-nut mats
which Were given to him on board ship, sets
aside the coloured threads and reweaves
them into baskets. Having accumulated a
small stock in trade, he sells them in the
dearest market which, with great commercial
perception, he creates out of the camp
visitors. He charges from ten to fifty cents
a basket. The visitors think they are getting
a bargain, as indeed they would be if mats
had tongues and could tell their own stories.

One day some girls visited the camp.
They wore carnations. Whilst exploring the
odorous mysteries of Kitchen No. 4 one of
them dropped her bouquet. She didn't
notice her loss. A company cook picked up
the flowers and fondly examined them. He
saw their beauty and determined to create
more of their kind. So he obtained, it is
impossible to say how, a sheet of pink paper
out of which he made several blooms. He

MARCH. APRIL AND MAY 187

showed them proudly to his company officer
who, seeing in this new industry a means to
an amorous end, detailed a section to making
imitation flowers : roses, foxgloves, blue-
bells, carnations, irises, and so on. A passion
for imitating nature spread through the
ranks. It was a noble pastime. Some even
bettered nature, gathering on route-marches
branches from various trees and decorating
them with blossoms unknown in any land.

Coolie ingenuities do not stop at this.
They glance admiringly at the neat putties
worn by the Canadian camp sentries. Having
other uses for snipings of tent canvas, they
look in another direction for material and
find it in the (to them) useless cloth waist-
belts which they are made to wear. So by
cutting it in two they convert this article
into a pair of putties. Hemming and experi-
menting in regard to the neatest manner of
wearing this coveted apparel fill many an
idle hour.

Lastly, so much leisure drives the coolie
artist mind to local action. Canvases almost
without number lie stretched before him,
inviting design and colour. But, beyond
inscribing thereon the number of his section.

i88 WITH THE CHINKS

he is forbidden to beautify his tent. So he
casts down his eyes and sees the earth. He
weeds and levels a patch until the naked
clay presents a workable surface. Then he
goes to the beach and picks up lumps of
sulphur. He crushes a brick and makes
madder-brown paste. He gathers coal dust
and fragments of multi-coloured glass. His
palette is now ready. First tracing a design,
whether of a temple or a dragon, some
legendary animal or religious figure, he " fills
in " with the aforesaid mediums and the
result, achieved on a fairly large scale, is the
pride of the company commanders and the
wonder of visitors.

'leisure drives the coolie artist mind to action

VI

At length the rumour spread that we were
to move again. Seemingly the coolies knew
it before their officers. The news was not
oflfieially given out until the day before
departure, yet the camp quivered with excite-
ment fully a week before we moved. It
might have been a "mass" intuition. More
likely a Canadian private gossiped with an
interpreter and gave the game away.

For all the easy life in Canada, the remnant
of "O.K." party was not reluctant to march
off to the wharf on May 23rd. Coolies, like
their officers, were anxious to get on with
the Interminable Journey, anxious to get
over there.

It was little to them that we were embark-
ing, not to be ferried across to Vancouver
(a few hours' run), but to sail to England
via the Panama Canal.

189

PART IV

JUNE

One limpid May afternoon, H.M.T. Empress
of Asia sailed from a quarantine station in
Canada with "O.K." party on board, who
were now joined by East of the Mountain
men. Our party was given the aft part of
the ship and theirs the fore part. It was in-
evitable that the two battalions should collide.
They did so — and before embarkation had
been completed. The police of both factions
found themselves assigned to the same quar-
ters. They fought with their truncheons for
the choice bunks. Ours maintained that we,
being the senior squad, had first choice in
the matter ; theirs, on more general grounds,
asserted that the two parties were now one
and that the sleeping quarters should be
fairly divided. They called one another
tortoises, and consigned one another to
perdition ; until a company officer, whose
o 193

194 WITH THE CHINKS

temper had not been improved by three
hours' continuous stowing away of coohes,
burst upon the scene and threatened aboli-
tion of the entire police force unless order
was immediately restored. Order was re-
stored and our squad found itself quartered
astern where the vibration of the screw
shook their bronzed bodies at night.

It was an unlucky quarrel for us, for not
only were the grounds on which we fought
quite wrong, but by fighting we lost one of
the choicest holds of the boat.

East of the Mountain men were right. We
were all of one body now. It was no use
shouting about seniority when we were
going into the submarine zone. After all we
were not so senior. We had landed in
Canada a week before them. But we had
sailed from China only three days before
them. And we had lost more than half of
our original strength. We were a remnant
with but three company officers of our own,
not to mention Jule and the O.C. Whereas
they had their full strength and a superfluity
of officers. Notwithstanding in our hearts
there was and could be nothing quite like
the " O.K." party, and it seemed to us,

JUNE 195

reduced as we were, that we should have
first say where say was necessary.

So that from the outset, the idea of a
division between the two battalions was dis-
couraged. The main thing was to order our
lives to the satisfaction of the Captain, not
for officers to wrangle about who should be
responsible for the sanitary conditions of
this or that hold, or for coolies to dispute
amongst themselves the right of way.

It may be interjected here that one of the
secrets of efficiently handling coolies (I sup-
pose that as a matter of fact it applies to
most organized bodies of men) is to make
them responsible to none but themselves.
If, for example, a coolie fails to attend life-
boat drill and is found asleep in his bunk,
he is informed that had the alarm been given
he would have lost his life. He is to blame.
Equally so his lance-corporal who should
have seen that he was on parade ; and in a
measure the fault is laid at the door of the
corporal of his platoon and the sergeant of
his section of the company. The blame, thus
internally spread, does not attach to the
company officer who, in order to ensure his
own blamelessness, covers himself at every

196 WITH THE CHINKS

conceivable point. The position of the CO.,
however, becomes precarious when there are
two parties on board and one is allowed to
saddle the other with all wrong-doing. Re-
sponsibility ceases ; he cannot justify his
" strafe " unless he has unmistakable evi-
dence, and such is quite unobtainable at a
C.L.C. court-martial or court of inquiry. The
only way out of it is to fuse the interests of
both battalions. And this was done at a
stroke by making all coolies aboard draw
their rations at the same time. On the
principle that if coolies can eat together they
can work together without rupture, it was
found possible to stamp out even a friendly
rivalry between the East of the Mountain
men and the West of the Mountain men.

Ship's bounds did not allow the two to lie
down together on the same deck and bask
bare-footed in the sun that grew hotter and
hotter day after day ; but there was no
regulation against standing hand in hand,
naked as Adam, under a cold shower and
blessing the appointments of a modern trans-
port. Neither was there anything against an
exchange of social visits after parade had
been dismissed. The police sank the enmity

JUNE 197

between them and took an oath to increase
from that day forth the strength of the
defaulters' squad.

I find I have not referred previously in
this diary to the task of stowing away coolies.
In orders it is alluded to as "embarkation";
by those experienced in the job it is known
as " packing." The coolies are not passengers
capable of finding each his cabin ; the coolies
are so much cargo, live stock, which has to
be packed away, so many head in a hold.
Picture them streaming into a hold, in single
file, their packs on their backs. Now it is
plain that if a coolie is not made to stay in
the bunk allotted to him, he will wander
around and block the incoming stream.
Company oflficers, who are official packers,
find that the best way of preserving order is
to seize the kit-bag of the coolie as soon as
he enters the hold, throw it in his bunk and
bundle the owner after it. In this manner,
and with the aid of malacca canes and
gloved hands, members of the "O.K." party
created a record, stowing away no less than
1700 coolies in an hour and thirty-five minutes.
Clarison figured prominently in this opera-
tion. Full recovery after a long convalescence

198 WITH THE CHINKS

fitted him for an unrivalled display of energy.
If it had not come from Malacca he would
have broken his cane " sweeping the little
blighters in."

The next three days on board practically
repeat the history of the first three days on
our Pacific voyage. Days that were devoted
to "settling down"; which process involves
the appointment of special sanitary squads,
posting the police, determining meal hours
and other functions which kept Jule at it
quite twenty-five hours a day. But there
was this great difference in the inaugural
history of the two voyages ; the "O.K."
party were now old hands at keeping things
clean. Two months in China, three weeks
across the Pacific, ten weeks in Canada had
not gone for nothing. Constant "strafing,"
endless patient explanation, and stern punish-
ment had awakened in them the pride of a
clean life. In camp they had fought for the
ownership of a garbage tin ; company had
sought to outdo company in the speckless-
ness of their lines ; there had been petty
internal quarrels over the discovery of a single
grain of cooked rice on an otherwise clean
tent floor. They carried this admirable

JUNE 199

scrupulousness on board the transport that
now bore them onward through tepid tur-
quoise waters under heat-saturated skies,
onward to Panama.

Jule had only to think back a few months
in order to conjure up one of the strangest
contrasts imaginable. Against this present
white, this disgust with dirt was set the dark
habits with which they came to camp in
China ; a complete disregard of their person,
a savage aversion to washing, toleration of
the dust of years, a coughing and a spitting
people. It was indeed wonderful, this con-
trast ; and lucky it seemed to Jule that
these particular battahons had this new
bright idea of life before passing through
one of the hottest zones in the world.

This morning, for example, they lay on
deck, fore and aft, on rafts and winch
platforms, wherever there was an inch of
space, the quietest, most contented folk in
the world. They had finished cleaning their
quarters and had come up to stretch them-
selves at full length in the now tropical
sun. The order of the day was no socks or
shoes ; some did not think this relinquish-
ment enough against the day's heat, so they

200 WITH THE CHINKS

left off their tunics as well. Others ven-
tured on deck in the nude. These moral
defaulters Were promptly dealt with by their
sergeant, who doubtless fired at them some
scathing Chinese proverb. But it was hot
and one could not blame them for wearing
as little as possible. All the morning they
would laze in the sun, sleeping, dozing,
humming to themselves, happy as so many
rabbits in a field at noon. After their
curiously childlike and affectionate manner
they would lie asleep clasping each the
other's hand or gently stroke the arm or neck
of a neighbour.

Even more wonderful for Jule were the
nights, soft Southern nights that reminded
him strongly of a trip, long since taken,
through the Indian Ocean. It was too much
for fully half of the coolies " down below."
The stench was abominable. They could
not breathe. So up they came and spread
themselves on the decks. For something to
lie on they brought their life-belts ; pillows
as they called them in their own language.
There was scarce enough room for all of
them, so they lay limb to limb, careless of
the heat they communicated one to another.

JUNE 201

glad to be where there was a breath of air,
with the cool dew falling on them, under the
stars. And before such a night was very old,
the moon would rise like a tarnished disc of
brass, out of a horizon thickened by the
day's heat, higher and higher until the rays
of it fell on a mysterious jumble of limbs,
palely lighting them, so that the deck re-
sembled a scene of death.

II

In order to instance what a Jack of all
trades the coolie is, what plastic stuff he is
made of, how quickly he responds and adapts
himself to a new set of circumstances, it will
be weU to note here that by degrees he is
taking over the diverse duties of the Can-
tonese crew who have signed on only as far
as some Atlantic port. By the time we reach
that port he will run the ship. Of course, he
won't have anything to do with the naviga-
tion or with the engines, but, so far as we
know at present, he will be stoker and cook,
cabin and bar-boy, baker and laundryman,
and he will probably be seen in some official
capacity on deck. Progress in this direction
has already been made. We find him to be
a cabin-boy par excellence. He is given a
white smock which quite hides the military
grey of his working clothes. Wherefore,
much pleased with his new uniform, he calls
himself an angel. He is always about ;
surely a great virtue on board an intricate

202

JUNE 203

modern passenger ship (which is now igno-
miniously called a transport). Not only does
he make one's bed, but he darns one's socks.
He acutely observes the peculiar position of
articles of toilette and leaves or replaces
them just there. He even is sentimental. If
an officer emblazons his washstand with a
picture of his girl, the coolie cabin-boy will
decorate the frame with paper flowers of his
own creation. He knows where everything
is, and apprentice though he be he will
not allow his master's private effects to
be touched by any Cantonese under the
sun.

The bakers are quite in their element. In
Shantung they were assistants in cook-shops ;
they used to make meat pies. Now, under
the supervision of the chief chej, they roll
flour and bake it and make incomparable
breakfast rolls. They wear aprons and look
like little chefs. The chief chef is as proud of
his apprentices as a turkey of her brood.
They salute him as they salute their com-
pany officers. He is a White Man, clothed in
white, with a nice ruddy complexion, and
they are quite deaf to his strong Cockney
accent. Being O.C. that wonderful foreign

204 WITH THE CHINKS

kitchen he is able to give them things to eat
untasted even by corporals and sergeants.

Gradually they are getting into other
positions. The electric laundry is equipped
with a staff of efficient controllers. There
are officer and errand boys galore. Every-
where the employer meets with the same
desire to please, the same versatility, the
same canniness. They go at it with a grin.
They combine modesty with boundless self-
confidence. The volunteers for any job are
always too numerous.

I see in the employment of the coolies on
board this transport a perfect epitome of the
manner in which the Chinese have succeeded
in so many parts of the world where other
races, less plastic and less enduring, have
failed to settle down and make good. The
Chinese is the happy colonist ; hardship he
endures with a grin ; he makes the foreign
land his own, communicating to it his
splendid energy. Consider his range. He
moves at ease in the chintz-hung mahogany-
furnished cabins of the first saloon, treading
lightly and speaking in hushed tones ; he de-
scends into the stoke-hole, dons overalls, and
fires and rakes a furnace with the scientific

JUNE 205

abandon of a Vulcan ; ascend with him to
the dispensary and perceive him in a white
coat red-crossed ministering expertly to the
ills of his fellows ; follow him to an un-
occupied cabin where he is applying himself
intently to the tracing of some native design
on a length of silk ; there is not a manual
job which he does not attempt and not many
at which he does not excel.

Ill

If there were no troops on board we could
not conscientiously say that we were on a
transport. As yet the war touch is lacking.
We have no guns. We are not as careful as
we should be about not showing lights at
night. We should scarcely credit the reality
of a periscope if we saw one. To be sure,
when the whistle gives five blasts, we make
ourselves uncomfortable around the neck with
life-belts ; unhesitatingly we rush on deck,
"fall in" and try to look interested; but we
know aU the time it is merely camouflage.
The Cantonese crew may sweat undoing ropes
and letting down boats ; but we know that
as surely as the whistle has blown five times,
after an interval of a quarter of an hour, it
will blow once, and that the Cantonese crew
will have to sweat a jolly sight worse knot-
ting ropes and pulling up boats. And then
it is all over and we resume our safe exist-
ences. In our own language we call life-

206

JUNE 207

belts pillows or belts of peace, so assured we
are that we will never use them for the
purpose for which they were invented.
Enemy action is inconceivable. We live on
the gunless gun-platforms and loaf in the
Southern Pacific sun. We laugh at the
flying fish and strain to catch a glimpse of
other foreign fish glowing high-coloured in
the neighbouring deep. We are just "O.K."
party, by tradition and character men of
peace going to the Great War.

Jule, of course, knew that once through
the Canal things would change. The coolies
would see that these theatrical Ufe-boat
drills had not been given to tickle their sense
of humour ; that the gun-platforms were not
a recreation ground ; that the apparently
pernicious order to close all port -holes at
night had been enforced on purpose, when
the time came, to hold death off at arm's
length. But he wagered that, even with the
perils of war brought home to them, they
would go on grinning and having their child-
like jokes.

But there are troops on board and we're
as truly a transport as any that ever sailed
from outpost seas, carrpng reinforcements.

2o8 WITH THE CHINKS

They are Canadian recruits, still quite raw.
They only had their rifles given to them a
week before they sailed. They don't know
much about soldiering. In the narrow way
of discipline they don't know as much as the
coolies, to whom their morning drills are a
source of keen enjoyment. The coolies can
see them at work covering off, forming fours,
marking time ; they shout words of en-
couragement and unrestrainedly laugh at
their mistakes which they are quick to note.
But, on the whole, the coolies are extremely
sympathetic.

The Canadians know them as " Chinks."
They have a great admiration for their
physique, which in this tropical climate is
displayed often in toto. Converse between
troops and coolies is forbidden ; nevertheless
it goes on. One may easily observe a coolie
in earnest conversation with a sentry. A
hopeless difference in language does not pre-
vent fraternization. A coolie's gestures are
eloquent ; so are a sentry's when he wants
something. What he wants more often than
not is a souvenir of the Chinks ; a basket, a
coin, a paper flower. But he doesn't get
it as easily as he thinks he should. A coolie.

JUNE 209

like all Chinese, has a passion for bargain-
ing. He lingers over the negotiation as
long as possible. As a rule he gets his price
too.

IV

One early morning, hot at six o'clock, we
were in sight of new shores, luxuriously
vegetated shores that veered straight down
into a calm blue lukewarm sea. No sooner
seen by them than the coolies started the
foolish cry that at length we had reached
our destination. Indeed, it will be many a
day before any part of France is as peaceful
and as silent as the shores of Panama.

The next nine hours of the Interminable
Journey quite eclipsed in wonder anything
that the coolies had seen before. A few of
the better educated understood what we
were about when we entered lock after lock,
rising something like thirty feet at a time,
up to the level of a huge, semi-artificial lake
over which cranes and pelicans flew, the
haunt of snakes and alligators, and the by-
gone Home of Fever. Especially they were
interested in the little electric engines, four
of them on either side of the boat, which
towed us into the lock, held us rigidly in

2IO

JUNE 211

position as we rose or fell, and towed us out
again. These engines neither hissed nor
chugged ; they hummed and suggested in-
calculable power. Men East of the Hill
joined with the men West of the Hill in
their open-mouthed admiration of these
things. Certainly the White Man was all he
was cracked up to be — and a bit more.

They say we passed through the Canal
Zone on a day typical for this time of the
year. In the Culebra Cut a violent thunder-
storm drove below-decks hundreds of fas-
cinated spectators. But not for long. Shortly
they reappeared, having removed all un-
essential garments. At every lock and at
every station crowds of coons braved the
rain (I suppose they are well used to it) and
cheered us on our way. Among the coolies
there was considerable dispute as to the
reality of the coon. Some said he was a
white man besmeared with black oil ; others
more accurately defined him as a native of
India. The first theory was, however,
popularly accepted, for when a burly, bare-
chested nigger came on board and made his
way to the bow in order to take charge of
the spring lines there, he was given ready

212 WITH THE CHINKS

passage through the multitude of coolies, who
fell away from him, crying " Beware, beware,
you'll soil your clothes with oil."

Coolies and Canadians passing through the
Canal ! It was novel enough to attract a
crowd of Americans at every lock. They
wanted to cheer the Chinks and see what
manner of men they were. The Canadians
heartily responded, but the coolies, unversed
in cheering, clapped their hands, thinking
this the most Western thing they could do.
Between the locks niggers and negresses ran
down the hillside as we passed, shouting and
waving with ludicrous gusto. One negress,
clothed in a waistless white dress, being
carried away by her emotions, tore up a palm
by the roots and waved it frantically as John
Chinaman sailed by. Her enthusiasm was
not to be cooled even by a moderate cloud-
burst which, interested as he was, sent John
Chinaman flying for shelter.

Perhaps there were some ashore that day
who thought the coolies a bloodless crowd.
They didn't cheer ; they didn't wave flags ;
hardly one of them waved his hand. They
stood massed together in bow and stern,
pressed against the side-rails, overflowing

JUNE 213

on to the emergency rafts ; they stood and
stared, swaying slowly to and fro as a
shoulder-to-shoulder mob always does, chat-
tering now and again, but for the most part
silent and gestureless. I admit that their
mien must have been disappointingly cold,
especially so perhaps to the laughter-loving
coons ; but I wish that these good people of
the Canal Zone could have known, as we
knew, what was passing in the hearts of our
coolies. Their pulses quickened not so much
because they were the heroes of the hour,
cheered as lustily as any patriotic AustraUan
who had passed through on his way to the
front, but rather on account of the increasing
wonder of their voyage, the miracles of
engineering to which they were witnesses, the
continued good living and easy Ufe of which
this day in particular was representative.

V

Followed a couple of days and nights at

Colon, the Atlantic end of the Canal. There

we took on three thousand tons of coal.

There the coolies were confirmed in their

conclusion that they had come to a land

where none laboured save the negro, and he

did mighty little work. Electric machinery

did everything. It even coaled the ship. At

dusk and afterwards by the light of arcs, the

coolies watched a very coliseum of steel

minister to the internal needs of the ship.

Vast shovels, swung down from a vast height,

opened their claws, clutched a mass of coal,

and swung up (the overflow falling back like

black water) to empty their quarries in little

well-built cars which, as soon as they were

filled, automatically moved away on an

elevated rail. Little well-built cars (not a

man in sight) moved silently and slowly

along until opposite something which looked

like a grain elevator. The cars were hidden a

moment in the elevator's intricacies. Then

214

ONWAKD TO PANAMA

'followed a couple of davs and nxihts at colon

JUNE 215

the coal came sliding down a huge steel belt
and so, through a shovel, into the yawning
bunkers. It was all so wonderfully manless.
The only men visible had nothing to do with
the vast machine. They were American
regulars who, dwarfed to pigmy size, strutted
up and down the wharf under a world of
steel. The coolies laughed at them, so tiny
they looked. Upon which the httle soldiers
would tilt their sombrero-like hats at a
dangerous angle and nudge the stocks of
their rifles desperately under their arm-pits.

In point of fact their manner of carrying
their weapons led the coolies to believe that
the Yanks were Canal Zone huntsmen, not
Sammies who had strict orders to shoot at
sight any John Chinaman who attempted to
break the immigration laws of Colon.

Once clear of Colon we were, of course, in
the Atlantic. In the Atlantic ! That meant
a tightening of all ropes. The coolies were
solemnly informed by Jule that the real test
of their training would now be made. The
great moment had arrived. It was now
business in earnest.

The seriousness of the matter was brought
home to them not by word of mouth but

2i6 WITH THE CHINKS

by "physical" strafing. It just had to be.
It was no time to argue and explain.
For instance, Lin Ching, a weaver by pro-
fession, a quiet and altogether harmless
member of H Company, was found with-
out his life-belt not half an hour after we
left port. He quite understood the ex-
hortation that a man and his life-belt were
to be inseparable from now on, but, you
see, a life-belt to his mind was not primarily
a life-belt but a pillow. Now it so chanced
that a certain company baker (a sworn
brother of his), being without a belt of his
own and desiring to take forty winks on
deck, applied to Lin Ching for the loan of his
pillow, which he was readily granted. For,
be it said to his credit, a Chinese will stand
by his brother through thick and thin ; he
will both lie and steal for him. It was there-
fore nothing to Lin Ching to tolerate the
temporary absence of his life-belt. And it
justifiably puzzled him that Clarison, of all
company officers, should man-handle him
for upholding the honour existing between
Chinese sworn brothers. Clarison's explana-
tion that should the ship suddenly sink,
those who wore not life-belts would surely

JUNE 217

be drowned, was kind but tardy and really
uncalled for. Why, argued Lin, should the
ship suddenly sink ? And why should he be
drowned when he could swim ? And was
not the life of his sworn brother of more
account than his own ?

One begins to see the difficulties in the
way of absolute discipline. But, if there is
to be a minimum loss of life, absolute it must
be. So Jule would reiterate to company
officers.

So the coolies were given to understand
that the most heinous of all crimes commit-
table on the Atlantic was to strike a match
on deck at night. Now Jule knew that a
coolie is more liable to obey an order if he is
given a reason for obeying it. The reason
he gave was, should a coolie strike a match
on deck at night, the instantaneous result
would be the blowing up and consequent
sinking of the ship. It was not vouchsafed
whether the means of destruction was within
or came from without, or how a match was
suddenly endowed with such terrible powers.
Notwithstanding, the Chinese, a myth-loving
people, considered the explanation quite
enough and fell to devising punishments of

2i8 WITH THE CHINKS

their own to be visited, over and above
official justice, upon an offender against the
new law.

About this time Jule privately recorded
that the coolies saw that there was more in
the above " explanation " than meets the
eye. "The coolies," he jotted down, "are
aware of the existence of the submarine."
Indeed the subject was " worked to death "
in German propaganda long ago in the
recruiting days in China. Rumours were
constantly being circulated from " official
sources " that hardly a battalion of coolies
ever escaped an enemy submarine. Although
such rumours were generally discredited, the
possible dangers were not. So that it gradu-
ally dawned upon them there was some
connexion between striking a match at
night on the Atlantic and giving away ship's
position to the Hun.

Life, to be sure, was dreadfully restricted.
Lin Ching found his simplest movements
embarrassed by the now ever-present life-
belt. It was like living in a strait- waistcoat.
He could no longer slink and slide along,
after his manner, and get there first. He had
to wait and take his turn, whether drawing

JUNE 219

rations or visiting the hospital. He found
himself misjudging the width of a door.
Instead of lying on his side at night, he had
now to lie on his back. And, unkindest of
all, he had to keep the thing on during meals.
Wherefore his sense of decorum (strongly
instinct in any Chinese) was outraged.

Furthermore, all port-holes were painted
and then sealed up. In a moderate climate
this would have been a calamity ; in the
tropics it was a tragedy. Lin Ching meekly
complained to his corporal that it was im-
possible to breathe the air of his hold. The
corporal, a weak man, sympathized and
carried the matter to his sergeant. The ser-
geant, not daring to question the order of
the day, somewhat cryptically replied :

" It is better that one man die than four
thousand perish."

It was unanswerable and Lin had to be
content.

To add to the tension, life-boat drills
began. The poUce did what they could to
regulate the traffic of men, but their efforts
availed little against a stream of htmdreds
and hundreds. It was like a crowd rushing
for a tram-car. When the whistle blew five

220 WITH THE CHINKS

times, it was a signal for all to get on deck
as soon as possible. And all did. A footer
scrum was not in it. But it was all done
without injury, even without loss of temper.
And, according to Jule, the orderly officer
was justified in noting officially that " life-
boat drill was carried out in an orderly
manner."

VI

It was a relief to all when what may be
called the Atlantic tension was eased tem-
porarily by our putting into a Jamaican port.
With port-holes open and wind-shoots out,
we lay in harbour some days. We had
nothing to do but gaze at the town, with its
red roofs brilliant among palms, its toy-like
trams racing along and leaving a track of
white dust, its quiet old-world water-front.
The darkies came alongside in the canoes :
boys to dive for pennies and men and girls
to sell bananas and mangoes and melons.
We (by this time impoverished coolies) had
no money to fling away, so bartered parts of
our equipment. It was so hot that we had
no need for most of our clothes. And, since
it has been hot for so long, we assumed it
would never grow cold again. A cap pur-
chased half a dozen bananas ; a tunic, a
small basket of mangoes. The dark men
were satisfied with their end of the bargain
and so were we with ours. But, early in the

222 WITH THE CHINKS

day, our company officers took exception
violently to this system of exchange, so that
for the rest of our stay it could not be prac-
tised openly. The black men called us
" Chinks," after the manner of Americans,
and treated us with little deference. They
impressed us as a dirty, loud-mouthed people,
entirely lacking in a sense of delicacy. We
smiled at their girls, but didn't think them
amusing. We did, however, generously ad-
mire the superb swimming and diving of the
boys. They didn't lose a single coin.

We took a strong aversion to the dark
women, who were not only ill-shaped, but
dirty and clothed in poppy-coloured blouses
or daffodil yellow or some other abominable
colour. When some hundreds of them came
on board to help with the coaling and trim-
ming of the bunkers, we gave them a wide
berth.

We are never allowed ashore. Nor are our
friends, the Canadians. On the contrary,
the White Excellencies are. They lose no
time about it. As soon as the ship lies at
peace in the harbour, the stairs are lowered
by our fellow-countrymen, the Cantonese,
and the Excellencies, some in uniform and

JUNE 223

some in white, are away. Not that we in the
least care where they go or what they do ;
not that we want to grow more intimate with
the unsavoury blacks. But the palms and
the hills look jolly and we would learn some-
thing of the customs of a foreign country.
The Canadians do not accept the matter as
quietly as we do. According to Interpreter
Kwong they raised their voices the other
night so that their commander could hear
them, crying, " When are we going ashore ? "
It was not the right way to go about it, for
owing to these words they were sent to bed
an hour ahead of the usual time.

VII

Once more the tension tightened. Life-
belts on, port-holes closed, and silence on
deck at night. We were steaming in the
danger-zone, bound, so we understood, for
some Atlantic port, with no guns on board
and five submarines in the vicinity. Those
who had work were happiest. The sanitary
squad busy below decks, the silk workers
bending over dragons of their embroidery,
the company bakers rolling flour, the cabin
boys, the orderlies^ — none had time to scratch
their shaven heads over the inexplicable
antics of our transport ; how she zigzagged
and altered her course and changed her speed
and altogether behaved in a creepy manner.
Our friend, Lin Ching, having learnt his
lesson, was not loath to attribute every-
thing extraordinary to the presence of enemy
under- water craft. It was a darkish night at
sea, thirty-six hours' steaming from a West
Indian port. The moon was late in rising ;

a tropical haze obscured the stars. Silently

224

JUNE 225

we parted the waters of a dead calm. The
Canadian guards stood motionless, one on
the port side, one on the starboard of the
boat deck, leaning on their rifles, gazing out
to sea in search of the phosphorescent wake
of a periscope. On a lower deck astern slept
the coolies, some half-naked, some clothed in
their thinnest grey summer suits ; altogether
an indefinite grey mass on the dark night in
question. Lin Ching found it too hot down
below in the holds. He tried to fan himself
to sleep, but the heat and excitement were
too much for him. He felt that something
was going to happen. He had just an ounce
of imagination which caused him a pound of
troubled dreams in which under-sea craft
played the leading role. So he came on deck
to get away from his sergeant who parroted
the O.C.'s warning in regard to the fatal
attraction which an open port-hole had for
an enemy submarine. He came on deck to
get fresh air and sleep.

Now when a coolie has to choose his bed-
place on deck he does so with great delibera-
tion. There are so many things he has to
consider. If there's a wind blowing he has
to find shelter. If there's a moon shining he

Q

326 WITH THE CHINKS

must needs find shadow. There is always
the possibiHty of rain — especially in the
tropics — so he has to have some kind of a
roof over his head. He must be away from
the beat of a policeman. Policemen are apt
to jab their truncheons into some part of the
nearest coolie just in order to show a rounds-
visiting officer that they are carrying out
their duties. Then again it is unwise to lie
near a thoroughfare, for an officer, making
rounds, has no more respect for the leg or
stomach or face of a coolie than he has for
the steel stairs of the companion-way. So
Lin Ching stood quite still for a few moments,
life-belt in hand, deliberating if he would
spend the night under an emergency raft (a
favourite resort) or on the base of an hydrauhc
crane. And as he stood his eye roamed and
he looked out to sea and saw a light ! Yes,
it was a light, appearing and disappearing,
never dropping behind as though it were
fixed, but running with the ship — far away —
as if in pursuit. He reasoned what it could
be and calmly concluded that it was an
enemy submarine. He drew a policeman's
attention to it, stating in a conversational
tone that it was an enemy submarine. The

JUNE 227

two quite agreed that it was an enemy sub-
marine ; and the policeman would have left
it at that had not our slightly imaginative
Lin Ching suggested the suitability of ad-
vising the orderly officer that there was a
submarine in pursuit. The suggestion ap-
pealed to the policeman, but he thought that
a third unbiased party might be consulted
before any action was taken. So they stirred
a coolie who was near into consciousness and
asked him to have a look at the light. The
third party could not say what it was until
Lin hinted that it might be — ^nay, was an
enemy submarine ! With which the coolie
agreed, consenting to be one of a party of
three who would report the matter.

The three lay in wait for the orderly
officer, trusting to catch him when he made
his next rounds. But orderly officers are
almost always somewhere else when they are
wanted. So rather than disturb him in the
smoking-room (where he was probably play-
ing a rubber of bridge) they decided to re-
port to one of the Canadian guards. Normally
this would not be possible without the aid of
an interpreter, but the matter being urgent
they appHed to him directly and pointed out

228 WITH THE CHINKS

the light. The reply he gave them was to
jab his thumb over his shoulder and tell
them to go back where they had come from
— and possibly a bit further — ^towards per-
dition.

It was pretty bad for Lin and his com-
panions to mistake a revolving land light for
an enemy submarine, but in order to palliate
Lin's mistake and to demonstrate that white
or yellow born, imaginative minds act much
alike, it may be stated that not two hours
after this incident the Canadian guard, who
so scornfully received Lin's report, himself
reported to the Captain's bridge a burning
ship astern, which turned out to be nothing
more than the rising moon.

A setting star befooled the other guard.
Passionate Venus he mistook for a light to
port ; this, one early morning before dawn
when Lin Ching lay asleep beneath an
emergency raft.

Later that same morning we joined a
small convoy consisting of the Brat, our sole
escort, a small gunboat taken over from the
enemy by U.S. Navy ; Camouflage, an awk-
ward old liner decorated in the latest post-
impressionist manner ; and Weary Willie,

JUNE 229

an Australian transport which we unjustly
accused of limiting the speed of our convoy
to nine knots. The Brat was once an enemy
craft ; so we had little respect for her. Be-
sides, there was something particularly Ger-
man about her. She was squat and ugly ;
she lacked poise ; she had no lines. She
seemed totally inadequate for our protection.
And, though she was better than nothing
and a faithful companion and competent
guide, we positively blushed for her when
one morning she hoisted a sail to take advan-
tage of a strong following Wind. Apologies
were mentally made to Weary Willie, for we
knew then she was not holding us back.

Outside a serene few who, extraordinarily
dense, do not even know that there is a war
on and whom nothing less than the explosion
of a torpedo amidships would stir to astonish-
ment, perhaps the calmest coolie on board
is a hospital dresser, a tubby, round-faced
coolie who strongly reminds one of the
popular conception of Humpty - Dumpty.
Dumpty — as we may call him — did yeoman's
service coming across the Pacific. With two
C.A.M.C. men " under the weather," and a
bespectacled little Chinese doctor on the

230 WITH THE CHINKS

point of prostration, Dumpty carried on,
making wonderful use of a slight knowledge
of medicine. He would bandage, diagnose,
take a temperature, prescribe with confident
jollity. He always had a smile, truly a
generous smile, of the healing effect of which
he was quite unconscious. His manner, not
skill, won for him an enviable clientele.
When calm seas restored the certified medicos
to their practice, many coolies would have
none of them, preferring to consult Dumpty.

Dumpty is still with us, but he is out of a
job, for at this stage of the Interminable
Journey there are no sick.

It is worth while chronicling here that our
John Chinaman is an exceedingly clever
shammer. In terms of trouble and in point
of appearance there is no difference between
a coolie who is really sick and one who is
shamming. Paralysis is a favourite sham.

It is readily resorted to when a coolie thinks
he has done enough work for the present.
Suddenly, mysteriously he is dispossessed of
the power to move his legs. They dangle
from him horribly. An officer thinks he is
shamming, so he details a couple of men to
set the paralytic on his feet. But his feet

JUNE 231

will not hold him; he collapses. And, be it
said, he will endure both pain and shame to
prove that he is not shamming. When his
word is tested he becomes perverse. He loses
sight of his original object. The maintenance
of the sham grows more important than the
shirking of work. This is characteristic of
our John Chinaman.

In the dull camp stages of the Inter-
minable Journey, the number of malingerers
reaches high- water mark. It is only Dumpty
who is able to deal with them. They cannot
fool him. Maybe they don't want to. His
smile reduces them to active reality. His
simplicity intensifies their sense of shame.

When there is a move on, there are no
shammers. Indeed, the sick in hospital
miraculously acquire health. The half -dead
pray with pathetic earnestness to be released.
On the point of every move the sick are
seized with a holy horror of being left behind.
To be left behind is to be indefinitely delayed,
to be cut off, to be repatriated perhaps. A
dreadful business.

I described Dumpty in order to instance
that in the submarine zone the coolest may
be caught unawares. It is a zone of perils

232 WITH THE CHINKS

and surprises, adventures and heroisms, and
eminently a zone of false alarms. There is
no rest for the nervous. For the imaginative
it is a nightmare. For good and for bad it is
upsetting. And yet, looking back on a few
days of it, nothing has happened ; probably
nothing will happen. We have sailed the
seas in peace. We have had security. Only
we have been troubled by dwelling on the
propinquity of these under-water monsters.
As if the surface monsters, the winds and
the waves, had not been infinitely more
perilous to Columbus and his companions
who landed long, long ago not far from
where we are to-day !

Jule is chatting with the sergeant of police.
He is straining his newly acquired Chinese
vocabulary to reaffirm the fatalness of
smoking on deck after dark. He is struggling
with a metaphor when he feels himself lightly
touched on the arm. He turns to perceive
Dumpty — Dumpty with no smile. Some-
thing is wrong. The tubby little fellow is
fairly trembling with excitement. At last
he speaks. He wishes to draw his Excel-
lency's attention to something over there in
the sfea, about a couple of hundred yards

JUNE 233

astern of Weary Willie, something resembling
a two-foot section of gas-piping that cuts
through the water and causes a wake, some-
thing that follows Weary Willie with deadly
precision, now seeming to gain slightly, now
falling behind. What is it ? He would like
to know ; as would a number of coolies
whose keen eyes are focused on the pheno-
menon. To Jule it is a periscope at first
sight. The next second he expects Weary
Willie to say something on the matter, with
a diagonal remark perhaps from the Brat
which is dead ahead of us. But the second
passes and no gun spits. Then, instead of
the flash and boom of a 4.7, a machine-gun
breaks out into intermittent fire. Where-
upon jets of water in alignment with the
ci-devant phenomenon, some a good deal
short and others quite beyond.

" Don't thinlc much of that shooting," says
Clarison to Jule.

" A target, of course," cries Jule. And,
hailing an interpreter, he proceeds to set
Dumpty at rest on the point.

And Dumpty, convinced, duly informs the
increasing crowd of coolies.

And so every morning at the same hour

234 WITH THE CHINKS

Weary Willie would drop a target from her
stern and tow it along. It would be fired at
with indifferent results. The coolies would
severely criticize the marksmanship. Not
all so well informed as Dumpty, there was
surprise at the daily punctual appearance
of the enemy. The skirmish was always
followed with the greatest interest. If the
target was hit (you could hear the plunk on
the wooden frame) they would cry with
delight, and when at length, the day's prac-
tice over, the target was cut adrift and fell
rapidly behind Weary Willie, as if in full
retreat, cheering would go up from our decks
and they would fall to congratulating one
another on the defeat of the enemy.

VIII

Lin Ching, on his return to China years
hence, when there is peace in the world
again, will tell in a tea-house with friends
and relatives around, how on the Inter-
minable Journey to France, he touched at
the most wonderful city of the West — New
York. He will not be conventional and
describe the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn
Bridge and the sky-scrapers. The crowded
entrance to the harbour, the ceaseless trip-
ping and tooting, the bustling docks, will
probably have passed out of his mind.
Neither will he remember the entire novelty
of everything he saw, from the neat green
Narrows to the broad sweep of the Hudson
swinging northwards. He, the unassuming
weaver, will recall but two things. First, the
port lights of the holds were open in New
York ; last, white people waving from ferries
in New York.

There is an incident connected with the
first memory. It is midnight. The ship lies

235

236 WITH THE CHINKS

alongside the wharf. If Lin puts his head
out of the port, he sees the steel sides of the
great warehouse, high and massive in the
hght of arc-lamps. He sees the water
gleaming oilily against the dark hull ; he
hears it gurgling and gently splashing. A
minute, and a siren shrieks. Then the chum
and hiss of propellers. It is on the other side
of the ship. There between the stern of the
ship and the warehouse, as in a rectangular
frame of grey and black, he sees a tug pass
followed by a barge ; a red light gleams,
then a green one. The air is keen though
not fresh ; it is coldish and odorous like the
atmosphere of a cellar in which meat and
vegetables are stored. It is appetizing. He
inhales it. Presently with a groan a door of
the warehouse slides open, revealing a man
who manipulates a white broom with con-
siderable energy. Lin perceives that the
man is a White Man dressed in dusty-dark
clothes with a slouch hat drawn over his
eyes. He notices also that the White Man
has a stubbly white beard. For which Lin
respects him, for age is highly honoured and
deferred to in China. He is sweeping out
the warehouse. Pausing a moment he sees

JUNE 237

the weaver — a bronze hairless head sticking
out of a port-hole, two brown eyes, bright as
the eyes of a cat. Lin grins. The sweeper
grins terribly by way of imitation.

" What's your name, Charlie ? " he cries.

Lin politely responds by jerking up his
thumb — a native gesture suggesting super-
lativeness.

" Yer don't get me," says the sweeper,
shaking his head.

Lin again signals super lativeness. This
time with great animation. His eye, ever on
the alert for something to eat or to appro-
priate permanently, lights on the sweepings
of the White Man. Huge emerald cabbage
leaves, among wooden shavings and other
rubbish, are being rushed towards destruc-
tion. Two sweeps of the broom and the
delectables wiU be over the side of the dock,
down in the dirty water. It is too wasteful
for words — ^those delicious cabbage leaves
going . By stretching out both arms sud-
denly he manages to bring the sweeper to a
full stop — ^just in the nick of time.

" Naw then, Chinky, what are yer up to ? "

For a moment it looked like suicide.

Having attracted the attention of the

238 WITH THE CHINKS

sweeper, Lin mimics the act of eating and
intensely enjoying a cabbage leaf.

The sweeper watches him, fascinated, then
points to his own head, so attesting his belief
in Lin's insanity.

"Go to bed, Chinky, go to bed," he cries
in disgust, going on with his work.

But Lin is not to be put off. Since gestures
fail to convey his desire, he resorts to speech
and explains, beyond a shadow of misappre-
hension, what he wants. He is meticulously
polite too, calling the sweeper " Honourable
Aged " ; but all his eloquence and politeness
are wasted. With one last swish — horribly
adept — ^the sweepings go, cabbage leaves and
all, rustling and flapping into the liquid
darkness.

Lin's head disappears. New York becomes
for him a place of Lost Opportunities.

In respect to the second memory there
will come into his mind a picture of the
ferries crossing and recrossing the river as
we lay at anchor in the Hudson before moving
into dock. Oh, those dark red ferries that
rushed by, causing such a wash and a stir ;
crowded they were wherever there was space
to sit or stand, crowded with little white men

JUNE 239

and women who waved and cheered and
jostled one another to get a good view of Lin
Ching as he stood leaning against the rail,
one of a mass of coolies. Boat after boat
passed and there was always cheering,
waving, excitement. The humble weaver
never knew whether or no he should wave
back ; he couldn't make up his mind, so he
didn't wave ; nor did any of his brothers.
Yet he dimly felt there was welcome, friend-
liness, something nice at any rate in this
constant display of handkerchiefs. He saw
the Excellencies on the higher deck waving
back, and possibly they had an acquaintance
on each ferry that passed. And he remem-
bered how when night fell the ferries con-
tinued to go by, now ablaze with light as if
bediamonded. And still there were the
same signs of welcome, visible and audible.
For many hours he witnessed this wonder,
then went below with the sight and sound of
the last ferry as a vision in his head, mysti-
fied as to the meaning of the little White Men
and Women.

It was otherwise with Dumpty. His in-
telligent eyes were wide open as we glided
past quays and colliers at anchor and convoys

240 WITH THE CHINKS

awaiting escort up towards Manhattan Island.
He saluted the Statue of Liberty as the
largest monument he had ever seen. He
inquired what manner of Buddha the green
bronze lady was. Seen a mile away he
mentally docketed New York as a first-
class walled city. The walls appeared im-
measurably higher and stouter than the
Great Wall which he had seen at Nan San,
a few miles from Peking. The bridges span-
ning the East River were incomparable,
exceeding surely the most visionary concep-
tion of Kubla Khan. Soon he saw the sky-
scrapers were not walls, but buildings of
astonishing height. The perils of the city,
he thought, must be very great. In a strong
wind such structures might topple. And it
cannot be a nice city to dwell in, for in the
streets there must always be more shadow
than sunshine. And people who live in
everlasting danger and comparative darkness
cannot be a happy people and must stand in
need of a good deal of medical attention. In
which conjectures, so simply reasoned,
Dumpty was more correct than one would
think.

It was no disappointment to Dumpty that

JUNE 241

he was not allowed ashore, for he knew by
this time that coolies never disembarked unless
the ship had reached her final destination,
and he, in common with the rest of the
" O.K." party, knew that the transport was
to carry them all the way to England or to
France, and that New York for a certainty
was neither England nor France. Yes, for
once the cry, "This is France," was not
raised. New York, it almost seems, took
the coolies unawares and impressed upon
them her own extraordinarily strong identity.
It is one of the tragedies of the war that
so many delightful things in connexion with
it have to be kept secret. Numbers, positions
and movements as affecting the transport of
men must on no account be given away in
either letter or chin-wag. The theory is
that all walls — especially the walls of New
York — ^have ears and that lurking behind the
walls is the enemy. This truth was fully
appreciated by Jule as he went ashore at
"the greatest port in the world," and pro-
ceeded in company with friends to see the
sights and meet people — people who wanted
to know all about the ship which, the day
before, had anchored in the Hudson,

242 WITH THE CHINKS

crowded in bow and stern with men in grey
uniforms — Orientals they were sure — whether
Indian, Chinese or Japanese they didn't
know. That's what they wanted to learn.
Who were all these men and where were
they going ? A paper said (papers always
get inside information) they were Japanese
troops which had come through the Panama
Canal straight from Nippon, reinforcements in
fact for the Western Front. Could Jule throw
any light on the matter ? Of course he could.

Jule, escorted by his sister who — ^what
luck ! — happened to live in New York, was
sitting in a fashionable restaurant in Fifth
Avenue. They were accompanied by a
couple of youthful and charming American
beauties — a sisterly provision to which Jule
had faintly objected, maintaining chival-
rously that, if luck gave him his sister for a
day or two, he should give all himself and
all his time to her.

" You old hypocrite," she said, promising
that if he didn't like her taste in Yankee
girls she would send them away and punish
him with her sole lovable presence for the
rest of his leave, which was about four hours.

Needless to say Jule discovered that he

JUNE 243

was in profound agreement with his sister's
idea of American beauty.

It was something to two well-dressed young
women not long out of college that they were
talking to a man who was a banker in China
or in some bank — ^it mattered not which —
this was an experience in itself. It was also
something that they were having tea with a
man who was in charge of they didn't know
how many Chinese. But it was infinitely
more to the point that they were dancing
with Miss East's brother who was "going
over." Going over! That was the magic
phrase of the moment. Into its meaning
was infused all the fresh fervour with which
America has entered the war ; all the com-
mendation of which two patriotic young
hearts were capable. There was nothing in-
sincere about their sudden interest in him
and his particular job of work ; nothing
artificial or in the least galling about their
openly affectionate treatment of him that
afternoon of talk and tea and dance. He
felt with some misgiving that he was being
lionized. He didn't want or deserve it ;
months ago he had said his real farewell,
away in China, who had held out her hands

244 WITH THE CHINKS

to him and beflagged and tin-deified him
until he felt that never in this world would
he become a hero. This was quite aside from
the consideration that as yet he had done
nothing worth speaking about ; he had
merely been with a battalion of coolies for a
few months ; he had seen strange parts of
the world with them ; he was going to take
them to France. He was less of a soldier
than old Sammy who sat at the next table,
trained and in uniform, probably going over
there in the same convoy as himself. Yes,
technically he had not even got his commis-
sion and he sat there in ignominious mufti.

So in order to defend himself against un-
deserved praises and pettings, he began to
talk about the coolies and to tell everything
he could which would redound to their
credit and which in the teUing would be
within the honour of an officer. He told of
their gentle and generous natures, their
response to stern fair treatment with the
right spirit of obedience, their submission
and simplicity, their endurance of serious ill,
their contentment over long periods with the
bare necessities of life without any of life's
adornments or degeneracies, their wonderful

JUNE 245

health and magnificent bodies, bodies capable
of almost unbehevable labour, labour that
was lifting them in France to the praiseful
respect of their brother, the British navvy
and the Colonel of Labour alike. Also he
told of their keen sense of humour. It was
either that or a prevailing joy of life in their
simple worriless outlook which enabled them
to grin and keep on grinning.

"A coolie with a grouch," Jule went on,
warming up to his fair audience, "is as rare
as a camel without a hump. I don't think
he exists. His sense of humour is too keenly
developed to allow him to make an ass of
himself. He is continually seeing fun in
little things. His lips shape to a laugh on
the faintest provocation. He is a jolly chap.
My O.C. tells me that he has stopped a riot by
making a joke. Show a coolie the ludicrous
side of anything and he is submissive, beaten.
This is the kind of man we have to deal with.
And he is doing his bit over there. I don't
think it matters greatly whether he is con-
scious of doing his bit or no. At least fifty
per cent of them but faintly realize there is
a war on. It is a huge game to them, and
they don't know the sides or the ways or the

246 WITH THE CHINKS

rules of it. All they know is that they are
going to take part and earn some money and
keep on seeing new things. The whole matter
is placed before them in the light of a business
proposition. Transport to France, and back
to China when their job of work is done ; a
franc a day while they are at it and a
separation allowance made to their families.
Roughly that. They are not conscripted ;
their services are voluntary. There is no
question of ' Go and labour in France, for
China is one of the Allies.' It is : ' Here's a
chance to see the world and earn good
money.' The patriotic strain may be absent
in the beginning and in the getting there,
but it was shown but recently."

Jule stopped. Horrified he heard himself
talking like a book. Wasn't he making him-
self a bore ? There was a fox-trot in full
swing. Why wasn't he dancing instead of
talking about something he didn't know a
great deal about ? He requested the pleasure

of In a minute he was away, swaying to

the melody of Poor Butterfly.

As they danced, he found himself con-
tinuing his peroration :

" Yes, it's said they fought with picks and

JUNE 247

shovels, anything hard and sharp that they
could lay their hands on to keep the Hun
from breaking through. Of course, the whole
thing may be a bit of journalism, but from
what I know of the coolie it's quite possible.
At any rate it was only a tiny incident on a
tiny bit of the front, but it fairly shows the
spirit of these fellows. As a matter of fact
they don't have to be caught in one of our
retreats to deal the enemy a blow. They are
doing that well enough behind the lines.
Remember, practically every coolie who goes
to France releases an able-bodied man to go
into the trenches. I'm not sure, though,
that the coolie himself wouldn't like a turn
in the trenches ! "

" He won't be given a turn, will he ? "
asked Jule's partner.

" I'm afraid not. Yet you never can tell.
If the war goes on long enough I don't see
why they shouldn't bring over a few hundred
thousand of these splendid fellows. Probably
they would make good fighters — almost as
good fighters as they are labourers. At all
events, if they don't get a Tommy's chance
in this war, they will get it sooner or later in
their own country. It will be a war of their

248 WITH THE CHINKS

own — a civil war — not flesh and blood
against flesh and blood, but clean, clear open
minds against the dirt and truck and turgid-
ness of centuries. When these men go back
to China they won't be satisfied with the old
life, the constricted and congested village
life ; they wiU want an existence more akin
to our Western ideas and ideals of life ; they
will want more order, more open spaces, more
cleanliness, and they won't want to stick in
one place their whole lives. They will want
to move from one part of the country to the
other, and mix and throw light into one
another's lives. In a word they will be pro-
gressive."

" Not surely as we have been progressive,"
commented the young collegian. " Look
where our progress has led us."

The dance had finished and they were
sitting again at the table.

" No," continued Jule, " their progress
won't lead them to racial suicide. And I
think if the truth were known their leaders
are pretty sick of civil war. They want to get
together, as you Americans say, and construct.
Indeed, I shouldn't wonder if a really stable
form of government resulted from their

JUNE 249

labour movement. Just a few drops of the
best blood of China are in France — ^the simple
solid farming folk of China — and that blood
will go back one day to leaven the whole
lump."

" What are you young people talking
about ? " put in Jule's sister.

" Something we don't know much about,"
he answered blushingly. " The old Chinks
" he began.

" Don't call them Chinks," the American
girl said, pouting. " I'll never call them
Chinks again ! I think they are just little
tin gods ! "

It is the destiny of all CooUe Labour Batta-
lions, once landed in France, to be divided
into I don't know how many parts, and dis-
persed over a wide area of usefulness. Only
in transportation is it a body, having a
character quite its own. It ceases to exist,
save in name.

If, in certain minds, the " O.K." Battalion
is immortalized it shall be for these :

The Christian sergeant of E Company, who
renounced pedagogy in China for labour in

250 WITH THE CHINKS

France. He converted his entire company
if not to Christianity, then to hymn-singing
and to a kind of prayer which certainly was
not " heathenish." I see him again, in his
company's hold, the centre of a throng of
coolies. His squat little Napoleonic figure is
swaying in time to the melody of " Onward,
Christian Soldiers." He beats the time with
a red paper-covered book. His voice clear
and strong, though to our ears quite un-
attractive, rings above the rest. And the
rest in varying pitch and with tinsel timbre
follow him as best they can. And they find
themselves being led not by his definite
beat, but by his boundless enthusiasm. I
don't suppose the Christian sergeant had
missionary ideas of conversion. He had a
pretty good idea of Christianity himself ; he
could teach probably as well as he had been
taught. But he knew better than the mis-
sionary the dangers of half turning a man
towards some new light. So he left the
creed alone ; he didn't preach. Only he
sang and prayed, and his song was a rousing
hymn and his prayer was a jolly sensible talk.
Nothing could disturb the equanimity of
the old chap, not even the report that one of

JUNE 251

his own coolies had done wrong. I think he
must have thought of it in this way, that un-
intentionally the coolie hadn't done right,
not that he had purposely done wrong. He
was kindly and liberal towards his men, but
he was not a softie. I imagine that his
rebuke, which he never backed up with
physical force, was very ef&cacious. He
would take a man apart and explain his
error. He would, I dare say, trade upon his
knowledge of the classics to awe and gain
obedience from the offender. The Chinese
profoundly respect learning and listen more
readily to figurative reason than to bullying
rebuke. How well the Christian sergeant
understood his men and what excellent
results he obtained !

Then there was the little actor of F Com-
pany who had belonged to a company of
strolling players in China and who never
ceased to play the fool from the day he
became a labourer. He was a little fellow
who looked not more than seventeen or
eighteen. Mischief was writ large on every
feature of his little bronze face ; his hazel
squint eyes danced from dawn to sundown.
For just a coolie he was almost dangerously

252 WITH THE CHINKS

intelligent. He had a great following in his
company. He could amuse a crowd at any
moment, and when he hadn't a crowd he
could amuse himself. He was something of
an acrobat. He would turn cartwheels or
do the splits or stand on his head for no reason
at all. But he could amuse best by mimicry.
He would take off company commanders
in their most solemn moments. He would
imitate a Canadian sentry on guard, flagrantly
showing his disrespect for that gentleman.
As for the coolie police, he would play the
clown before those dignitaries as they filed
to their posts whether on board ship or in
camp. He was intensely in his element when
in Canada a company of actors and acrobats
was called for to amuse parties of jaded
Brass Hats who came out to visit or inspect
the camp. Nobody interfered with him, and
he gradually worked up into the unofficial
position of battalion clown. Nobody inter-
fered with him until one day (between a port
in Western Canada and the Panama Canal)
he lodged a complaint with the Adjutant of
the " O.K." party to the effect that his
company commander had in a fit of anger
or insanity seized his kit-bag and thrown the

JUNE 253

same overboard. Inquiry revealed that said
company commander had confiscated his
sleeping mat — the least important item of a
coolie's kit — owing to its uncleanness. As
for the essentials — shoes, socks, spare uni-
form, waterproof coat, water-bottle, etc. —
these were in the hands of a Canadian private
(a trophy collector and evidently possessed
of private means) who had paid what to the
mind of the little actor was a fair price. A
negotiation most uningeniously explained,
thought the Adjutant, who after meting out
due punishment and regaining the kit for
safe-keeping, appointed the culprit personal
servant of the battalion sergeant-major,
with the strict injunction to devote himself
personally to the cleanliness of the latter's
quarters.

This didn't end the career of the actor.
He made himself so objectionable to the
sergeant-major that that worthy wouldn't
have him at any price. So he was sent back
to his company. An opportunity to cut a
caper soon presented itself. At New York a
British gun crew came on board our trans-
port. They had their quarters in the stern
not far from the coolies' quarters. The

254 WITH THE CHINKS

battalion clown lost no time in trading upon
the new-comers' fascination with the coolies,
and he had soon ensconced himself as servant
in their quarters. He played up to them---
they petted him and thought him a " quaint
little Chink." Two days out from port a
gun-layer missed his watch ! then in swift
succession several other articles disappeared.
Suspicion, of course, fell on the actor. The
gun crew complained to a C.L.C. officer.

What could be done ? They had paid the
price of their ignorance and the actor of his
folly. For a long time he ceased to amuse
the battalion.

We cannot forget the Chinese doctor, a
lad of five-and-twenty, who wore large gold-
rimmed spectacles and looked a student
every inch of him. Dr. Fang was bookish
and didactic. His knowledge of materia
medica was wide and exact. He was very fond
of diagnosing in circumlocutory fashion the
disease of a coolie. A theorist he was, but a
practitioner also, and a jolly good one. He
had extraordinary patience. It takes patience
to prescribe correctly for a score of coolies,
not a quarter of whom have the least idea
what is wrong with them. When not prac-

JUNE 255

tising, he read. He used modestly to tell
how in his final exam, at Peking University,
he passed second in a class of fifty. He was
going to France to work in the Chinese
hospital there. Nothing was going to dis-
turb him, not even the war. He was such a
calm fellow. The stay in France was going
to be just an interlude in life. And then one
day he would go back to Peking and take the
final exam, again and come out right on top.

There was the interpreter, Kwong, who
spoke better Chinese than do most inter-
preters. He used to be a clerk in a large
shipping firm in Hankow. He was accus-
tomed to ordering men about. His position
as chief interpreter to the "O.K." party de-
veloped his ability in this direction. But let
it be said to the credit of his character,
he never abused his authority. His finest
moment was when lecturing a mass meeting
of all ranks. The Adjutant would suggest
what had to be said and Kwong would say
it, finely employing emphasis by tone and
gesture. Kwong's great sorrow was that he
couldn't stand the slightest sea. When it
was not calm he was nobody on board.

Kwong's kind are generally stigmatized as

256 WITH THE CHINKS

" interrupters " simply because they are
failures as interpreters. The sense of one's
say has to be understood by the medium
before it can be communicated. Interpreters
as a rule either misconstrue or do not under-
stand at all. They interrupt. Not so Kwong.
The most idiomatic English was not too much
for him. And the faster one spoke the more
clearly he seemed to comprehend.

For a Chinese he saw the war in remark-
ably clear outline. He knew why we were at
war, which is more than half of us know. A
fusion of patriotic and financial motives had
moved him to resign a hopeful position in
Hankow. Although not a northerner he
loved the coolies and himself settled many a
petty dispute.

There was also the " Good-looker " who was
so like a girl, what with his large playful
brown eyes, Cupid lips and a rose in either
cheek, that passing him one could not but
help have a second look at him, and desire
half involuntarily to catch his eye and hold
him at gaze. On seeing an ofi&cer he would
come to attention with lightning precision
and stand smiling — ^his smile (never to be
forgotten) at strange variance with his

JUNE 257

serious rigid pose. He was the friend of all,
and even after being promoted to policeman
he continued to be a friend of all ; which is
notable, for a C.L.C. policeman is seldom
anything but the enemy of all.

There was the plump sergeant-major who
when appointed to that most honoured rank
(the highest to which a coolie can attain)
protested modestly that his education had
not fitted him therefor and that he would
rather see (for the good of the battalion)
So-and-so made sergeant-major. Which,
of course, was camouflage, in the classic
Chinese manner. He no more expected to
have his sergeant-majority taken away than
a coohe who offers you his dish of rice
expects you to take it from him.

And these among others too numerous to
name are at work in France. Some are
marching by the harvested fields of the
Somme country on their way to chalk pits to
dig ballast for light railways ; others are on
the docks in great ports of the South, loading
and unloading the cargoes of war ; yet others
are digging trenches within sound of the guns,
with 'planes droning overhead, not so far
away from the wings of death. A few on

258 WITH THE CHINKS

account of their special knowledges are re-
tained at Base Headquarters, happy in the
field office or the Y.M.C.A. Canteen.

And they are shod with heavy army boots
and their shins are bound about with puttees.
They sleep for the most part in huts and are
well supplied with blankets. They have
enough to eat and enough to do. And they
are earning money.

The Interminable Journey is over. France
at last. "And it's not so bad," said Lin
Ching to himself as he saluted a British
N.C.O. who affectionately called him Jumbo,

THE END